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A Guide to Digital Television

Systems and Measurements

Last active picture sample First active picture sample

COMPOSITE: Full analog line digitized

COMPONENT: Active line digitized, EAV/SAV added


EAV

SAV
3FF

1712 3FF
000

1713 000
XYZ

1715 XYZ
Cb

Cb
000

1714 000
Y
Cr

Cr
Y

Data
Word Number
0
1
2
3

Copyright ® 1997, Tektronix, Inc. All rights reserved.


A Guide to Digital
Television Systems and
Measurements

Acknowledgment
Authored by David K. Fibush
with contributions from:
Bob Elkind
Kenneth Ainsworth

Some text and figures used in this booklet reprint-


ed with permission from Designing Digital Sys-
tems published by Grass Valley Products.

i
ii
Contents
1. Introduction · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 1
2. Digital Basics · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 3
Component and Composite (analog)· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 3
Sampling and Quantizing · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 4
Digital Video Standards· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 4
Serial Digital Video · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 8
Rate Conversion – Format conversion · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 10

3. Digital Audio · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 11
AES/EBU Audio Data Format · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 11
Embedded Audio · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 11

4. System Hardware and Issues · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 19


Cable Selection · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 19
Connectors · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 19
Patch Panels · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 19
Terminations and Loop-throughs · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 19
Digital Audio Cable and Connector Types · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 20
Signal Distribution, Reclocking · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 20
System Timing · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 20

5. Monitoring and Measurements · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 23


6. Measuring the Serial Signal · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 25
Waveform Measurements · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 25
Measuring Serial Digital Video Signal Timing · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 26

7. Definition and Detection of Errors · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 29


Definition of Errors · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 29
Quantifying Errors · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 30
Nature of the Studio Digital Video Transmission Systems · · · · · · · · · · · 30
Measuring Bit Error Rates · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 32
An Error Measurement Method for Television· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 32
System considerations· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 33

8. Jitter Effects and Measurements · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 35


Jitter in Serial Digital Signals · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 35
Measuring Jitter · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 37

9. System Testing · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 39
Stress Testing · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 39
SDI Check Field · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 39

10. Bibliography· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 42
Articles and Books· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 42
Standards · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 43
11. Glossary · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 44

iii
1. Introduction
New methods of test and The following major topics 4. Test and measurement of
measurement are required to are covered in this booklet: serial digital signals can
determine the health of the 1. A definition of digital be characterized in three
digital video transmission television including digi- different aspects: usage,
system and the signals it car- tal basics, video stan- methods, and operational
ries. Analysis methods for dards, conversions environment. Types of
the program video and audio between video signal usage include: designer’s
signals are well known. forms, and digital audio workbench, manufactur-
However, measurements for formats and standards. ing quality assurance,
the serial form of the digi- user equipment evalua-
2. Considerations in select-
tized signal differ greatly tion, system installation
ing transmission system
from those used to analyze and acceptance testing,
passive components such
the familiar baseband video system and equipment
as cable, connectors and
signal. maintenance, and perhaps
related impedance match-
This guide addresses many most important, opera-
ing concerns are dis-
topics of interest to designers tion.
cussed as well as contin-
and users of digital television ued use of the passive 5. Several measurement
systems. You’ll find informa- loop-through concept. methods are covered in
tion on embedded audio Much of the transmission detail, including serial
(Section 3), system timing system methods and hard- waveform measurements,
issues (Section 4), and sys- ware already in place may definition and detection
tem timing measurements be used for serial digital. of errors, jitter effects and
(Section 6). Readers who are measurements, and sys-
3. New and old systems
already familiar with digital tem testing with special
issues that are particularly
television basics may wish to test signals.
important for digital video
start with Section 4, System
are discussed, including
Hardware and Issues. Discus-
equalization, reclocking,
sion of specific measurement
and system timing.
topics begins in Section 6.

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page 2
2. Digital Basics
Component and Composite ized for 525-line systems, ond, each one with only half
(analog) whereas there is an EBU doc- the lines. Every other picture
Image origination sources, ument (EBU N-10) for 625 line is represented in the first
such as cameras and line systems. Details of com- field and the others are filled
telecines, internally produce ponent analog systems are in by the second field.
color pictures as three, full fully described in another Another way to look at inter-
bandwidth signals – one each booklet from Tektronix, Solv- lace is that it’s bandwidth
for Green, Blue and Red. Cap- ing the Component Puzzle. reduction. Display rates of 50
italizing on human vision not It’s important to note that sig- or more presentations per
being as acute for color as it nal level values in the color second are required to elimi-
is for brightness level, televi- difference domain allow com- nate perceived flicker. By
sion signals are generally binations of Y, B-Y, R-Y that using two-field interlace, the
transformed into luminance will be out of legal gamut bandwidth for transmission is
and color difference signals range when converted to reduced by a factor of two.
as shown in Figure 2-1. Y, the GBR. Therefore, there’s a Interlace does produce arti-
luminance signal, is derived need for gamut checking of facts in pictures with high
from the GBR component col- color difference signals when vertical information content.
ors, based on an equation making operational adjust- However, for television view-
such as: ments for either the analog or ing, this isn’t generally con-
digital form of these signals. sidered a problem when con-
Y = 0.59G + 0.30R + 0.11B
Most television signals today trasted to the cost of twice the
The color difference signals are two field-per-frame bandwidth. In computer dis-
operate at reduced band- “interlaced.” A frame con- play applications, the arti-
width, typically one-half of tains all the scan lines for a facts of interlace are unac-
the luminance bandwidth. In picture, 525 lines in 30 ceptable so progressive scan-
some systems, specifically frame/second applications ning is used, often with frame
NTSC, the color difference and 625 lines in 25 rates well above 60 Hz. As
signals have even lower and frame/second applications. television (especially high
unequal bandwidths. Compo- Interlacing increases the tem- definition) and computer ap-
nent signal formats and volt- poral resolution by providing plications become more inte-
age levels are not standard- twice as many fields per sec- grated there will be a migra-
tion from interlace to pro-
gressive scanning for all
applications.
Further bandwidth reduction
of the television signal occurs
when it’s encoded into com-
posite PAL or NTSC as
shown in Figure 2-2. NTSC is
defined for studio operation
by SMPTE 170M which for-
malizes and updates the
Figure 2-1. Component signals. never fully approved,
RS 170A. Definitions for PAL
and NTSC (as well as
SECAM) can be found in
Y 0-5 MHz ITU-R (formally CCIR) Report
+ Composite Video
0-5 MHz
624. Where each GBR signal
may have a 6 MHz band-
width, color difference sig-
Chroma nals would typically have Y
2-5 MHz at 6 MHz and each color dif-
ference signal at 3 MHz; how-
ever, a composite signal is
R-Y 0-1.5 MHz Quadrature one channel of 6 MHz or less.
Modulation The net result is a composite
at subcarrier 6 MHz channel carrying color
B-Y 0-1.5 MHz fields at a 60 per second rate
frequency
that in its uncompressed, pro-
gressive scan form, would
have required three 12 MHz
Figure 2-2. Composite encoding. channels for a total band-

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width of 36 MHz. So, data particularly when decoding pling Theorem says that the
compression is nothing new; back to component. The interval between successive
digital just makes it easier. problem is that it’s relatively samples must be equal to or
For composite NTSC signals, easy to add setup; but remov- less than one-half of the
there are additional gamut ing it when the amplitudes period of the highest fre-
considerations when con- and timing of setup in the quency present in the signal.)
verting from the color differ- composite domain are not The second step in digitizing
ence domain. NTSC trans- well controlled can result in video is to “quantize” by
mitters will not allow 100 black level errors and/or sig- assigning a digital number to
percent color amplitude on nal disturbances at the ends the voltage levels of the sam-
signals with high luminance of the active line. pled analog signal – 256 lev-
level (such as yellow). This Sampling and Quantizing els for 8-bit video, 1024 for
is because the transmitter 10-bit video, and up to sev-
The first step in the digitiz-
carrier will go to zero for sig- eral thousand for audio.
ing process is to “sample”
nals greater than about 15 To get the full benefit of digi-
the continuous variations of
percent above 1 volt. Hence, tal, 10-bit processing is
the analog signal as shown in
there’s a lower gamut limit required. While most current
Figure 2-4. By looking at the
for some color difference sig- tape machines are 8-bit,
analog signal at discrete time
nals to be converted to NTSC SMPTE 125M calls out 10-bit
intervals, a sequence of volt-
for RF transmission. as the interface standard.
age samples can be stored,
As part of the encoding pro- manipulated and later, Processing at less than 10
cess, sync and burst are reconstructed. bits may cause truncation
added as shown in Figure and rounding artifacts, par-
In order to recover the analog
2-3. Burst provides a refer- ticularly in electronically
signal accurately, the sample
ence for decoding back to generated pictures. Visible
rate must be rapid enough to
components. The phase of defects will be revealed in
avoid missing important in-
burst with respect to sync the picture if the quantiza-
formation. Generally, this
edge is called SCH phase, tion levels are too coarse (too
requires the sampling fre-
which must be carefully con- few levels). These defects
quency to be at least twice
trolled in most studio appli- can appear as “contouring”
the highest analog frequency.
cations. For NTSC, 7.5 IRE of the picture. However, the
In the real world, the fre-
units of setup is added to the good news is that random
quency is a little higher than
luminance signal. This poses noise and picture details pre-
twice. (The Nyquist Sam-
some conversion difficulties, sent in most live video sig-
nals actually help conceal
these contouring effects by
adding a natural randomness
to them. Sometimes the num-
ber of quantizing levels must
be reduced; for example,
when the output of a 10-bit
processing device feeds an
8-bit recorder. In this case,
contouring effects are mini-
mized by deliberately adding
a small amount of random
noise (dither) to the signal.
Figure 2-3. Color difference and composite waveforms. This technique is known as
randomized rounding.
Digital Video Standards
Although early experiments
with digital technology were
based on sampling the com-
posite (NTSC or PAL) signal,
it was realized that for the
highest quality operation,
component processing was
necessary. The first digital
standards were component.
Interest in composite digital
was revived when Ampex
and Sony announced a com-
posite digital recording for-
Figure 2-4. Sampling an analog signal. mat, which became known as

page 4
D-2. Initially, these machines signals CB and CR, which are lier RP-125), and for 625/50
were projected as analog scaled versions of the signals by EBU Tech 3267 (a revi-
in/out devices for use in B-Y and R-Y. sion of the earlier EBU Tech
existing analog NTSC and The sampling structure 3246). Both of these were
PAL environments; digital defined is known as “4:2:2.” adopted by CCIR and are
inputs and outputs were pro- This nomenclature is derived included in Recommenda-
vided for machine-to-ma- from the days when multi- tion 656, the document
chine dubs. However, the ples of NTSC subcarrier were defining the hardware inter-
post-production community being considered for the sam- face.
recognized that greater pling frequency. This ap- The parallel interface uses
advantage could be taken of proach was abandoned, but eleven twisted pairs and 25-
the multi-generation capabil- the use of “4” to represent pin “D” connectors. (The
ity of these machines if they the luminance sampling fre- early documents specified
were used in an all digital quency was retained. The slide locks on the connec-
environment. task force mentioned above tors; later revisions changed
Rec. 601. Recommendation examined luminance sam- the retention mechanism to
ITU-R BT.601 (formerly CCIR pling frequencies from 4/40 screws.) This interface
Recommendation 601) is not 12 MHz to 14.3 MHz. They multiplexes the data words
a video interface standard, selected 13.5 MHz as a com- in the sequence CB, Y, CR, Y,
but a sampling standard. Rec. promise because the sub- CB…, resulting in a data rate
601 evolved out of a joint multiple 2.25 MHz is a factor of 27 Mwords/s. The timing
SMPTE/EBU task force to common to both 525- and sequences SAV and EAV
determine the parameters for 625-line system. Some were added to each line to
digital component video for extended definition TV sys- represent Start of Active
the 525/59.94 and 625/50 tems use a higher resolution Video and End of Active
television systems. This format called 8:4:4 which has Video. The digital active line
work culminated in a series twice the bandwidth of 4:2:2. contains 720 luminance sam-
of tests sponsored by SMPTE Parallel component digital. ples, and includes space for
in 1981, and resulted in the Rec. 601 described the sam- representing analog blanking
well known CCIR Recom- pling of the signal. Electrical within the active line.
mendation 601. This docu- interfaces for the data pro- Rec. 601 specified eight bits
ment specified the sampling duced by this sampling were of precision for the data
mechanism to be used for standardized separately by words representing the vid-
both 525 and 625 line sig- SMPTE and the EBU. The eo. At the time the standards
nals. It specified orthogonal parallel interface for were written, some partici-
sampling at 13.5 MHz for 525/59.94 was defined by pants suggested that this may
luminance, and 6.75 MHz SMPTE as SMPTE Standard not be adequate, and provi-
for the two color difference 125M (a revision of the ear- sion was made to expand the
interface to 10-bit precision.
Ten-bit operation has indeed
Excluded 766.3 mv 3FF 11 1111 1111 proved beneficial in many
700.0 mv 3AC 11 1010 1100
circumstances, and the latest
Peak
revisions of the interface
standard provide for a 10-bit
interface, even if only eight
bits are used. Digital-to-ana-
log conversion range is cho-
sen to provide headroom
above peak white and foot-
room below black as shown
in Figure 2-5. Quantizing lev-
els for black and white are
selected so the 8-bit levels
Black 0.0 mv 040 00 0100 0000 with two “0”s added will
have the same values as the
Excluded -51.1 mv 000 00 0000 0000 10-bit levels. Values 000 to
003 and 3FF to 3FC are
Figure 2-5. Luminance quantizing. reserved for synchronizing

page 5
purposes. Similar factors
determine the quantizing val-
Excluded 399.2 mv 3FF 11 1111 1111 ues for color difference sig-
nals as shown in Figure 2-6.
Max Positive 350.0 mv 3C0 11 1100 0000
Figure 2-7 shows the location
of samples and digital words
with respect to an analog
horizontal line. Because the
timing information is carried
by EAV and SAV, there is no
Black 0.0 mv 200 10 0000 0000
need for conventional syn-
chronizing signals, and the
horizontal intervals (and the
active line periods during the
vertical interval) may be
used to carry ancillary data.
Max Negative -350.0 mv 040 00 0100 0000 The most obvious applica-
Excluded -400.0 mv 000 00 0000 0000 tion for this data space is to
carry digital audio, and doc-
uments are being prepared
by SMPTE to standardize the
Figure 2-6. Color difference quantizing. format and distribution of
the audio data packets.
Rec. 601/656 is a well proven
technology with a full range
of equipment available for
production and post produc-
tion. Generally, the parallel
Last active picture sample First active picture sample interface has been super-
seded by a serial implemen-
tation, which is far more
practical in larger installa-
COMPOSITE: Full analog line digitized tions. Rec. 601 provides all
of the advantages of both dig-
COMPONENT: Active line digitized, EAV/SAV added ital and component opera-
EAV

SAV

tion. It’s the system of choice


for the highest possible qual-
ity in 525- or 625-line
3FF

1712 3FF
000

1713 000
XYZ

1715 XYZ
Cb

Cb
000

1714 000
Y
Cr

Cr
Y

systems.
Data
Word Number Parallel composite digital.
0
1
2
3

The composite video signal


is sampled at four times the
(NTSC or PAL) subcarrier
Figure 2-7. Digital horizontal line.
frequency, giving nominal
sampling rates of 14.3 MHz
for NTSC and 17.7 MHz for
Excluded 998.7 mv 3FF 11 1111 1111 PAL. The interface is stan-
100% Chroma 937.7 mv 3CF 11 1100 1111 dardized for NTSC as SMPTE
244M and, at the time of
writing, EBU documentation
Peak White 714.3 mv 320 11 0010 0000 is in process for PAL. Both
interfaces specify ten-bit pre-
cision, although D-2 and D-3
machines record only eight
bits to tape. Quantizing of
the NTSC signal (shown in
Figure 2-8) is defined with a
Blanking 0.0 mv 0F0 00 1111 0000
modest amount of headroom
above 100% bars, a small
Sync Tip -285.7 mv 016 00 0001 0000 footroom below sync tip and
Excluded -306.1 mv 000 00 0000 0000 the same excluded values as
for component.
PAL composite digital has
Figure 2-8. NTSC quantizing. been defined to minimize

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quantizing noise by using a sentation of vertical sync and composite. Also, the full
maximum amount of the equalizing pulses is also excursion of the composite
available digital range. As transmitted over the compos- signal has to be represented
can be seen in Figure 2-9, the ite interface. by 256 levels on 8-bit
peak analog values actually Composite digital installa- recorders. Nevertheless, com-
exceed the digital dynamic tions provide the advantages posite digital provides a
range, which might appear to of digital processing and more powerful environment
be a mistake. Because of the interface, and particularly than analog for NTSC and
specified sampling axis, ref- the multi-generation capabil- PAL installations and is a
erence to subcarrier and the ities of digital recording. very cost effective solution
phase of the highest lumi- However, there are some lim- for many users.
nance level bars (such as yel- itations. The signal is com- As with component digital,
low), the samples never posite and does bear the foot- the parallel composite inter-
exceed the digital dynamic print of NTSC or PAL encod- face uses a multi-pair cable
range. The values involved ing, including the narrow- and 25-pin “D” connectors.
are shown in Figure 2-10. band color information Again, this has proved to be
Like the component inter- inherent to these coding satisfactory for small and
face, the composite digital schemes. Processes such as medium sized installations,
active line is long enough to chroma key are generally not but practical implementation
accommodate the analog satisfactory for high quality of a large system requires a
active line and the analog work, and separate provision serial interface.
blanking edges. Unlike the must be made for a compo- 16:9 widescreen component
component interface, the nent derived keying signal. digital signals. Many televi-
composite interface transmits Some operations, such as sion markets around the
a digital representation of digital effects, require that world are seeing the intro-
conventional sync and burst the signal be converted to duction of delivery systems
during the horizontal blank- component form for process- for widescreen (16:9 aspect
ing interval. A digital repre- ing, and then re-encoded to ratio) pictures. Some of these
systems, such as MUSE in
Excluded 913.1 mv 3FF 11 1111 1111 Japan and the future ATV
system in the USA, are
intended for high-definition
Peak White 700.0 mv 34C 11 0100 1100 images. Others, such as
PALplus in Europe will use
525- or 625-line pictures.
Domestic receivers with 16:9
displays have been intro-
duced in many markets, and
Blanking 0.0 mv 100 01 0000 0000 penetration will likely
increase significantly over
the next few years. For most
Sync Tip -300.0 mv 004 00 0000 0100 broadcasters, this creates the
Excluded -304.8 mv 000 00 0000 0000
need for 16:9 program
material.
Figure 2-9. PAL quantizing. Two approaches have been
proposed for the digital rep-
resentation of 16:9 525- and
625-line video. The first
Reference Subcarrier method retains the sampling
U-V sample U+V sample
frequencies of the Rec. 601
standard for 4:3 images
(13.5 MHz for luminance).
This “stretches” the pixel
-U-V sample -U+V sample represented by each data
word by a factor of 1.33 hori-
+167 o
0.934 V
zontally, and results in a loss
of 25 percent of the horizon-
Excluded values
Highest sample 0.9095 to 0.9131 V tal spatial resolution when
0.620 V Luminance Level 0.886 V compared to Rec. 601 pic-
tures. For some applications,
this method still provides ad-
100% Yellow Bar equate resolution, and it has
the big advantage that much
Figure 2-10. PAL yellow bar sampling.

page 7
existing Rec. 601 equipment 16:9 signals using 13.5 MHz the low-frequency content of
can be used. sampling are electrically the transmitted signal, and to
A second method maintains indistinguishable from 4:3 spread the transmitted
spatial resolution where pix- signals, they can be con- energy spectrum so that
els (and data words) are veyed by the SMPTE 259M radio-frequency emission
added to represent the addi- serial interface at 270 Mb/s. problems are minimized.
tional width of the image. It’s planned that SMPTE In the early 1980s, a serial
This approach results in 960 259M (discussed below) will interface for Rec. 601 signals
luminance samples for the be revised to provide for was recommended by the
digital active line (compared serial transmission of EBU. This interface used 8/9
to 720 samples for a 4:3 pic- 18 MHz sampled signals, block coding and resulted in
ture, and to 1920 samples for using the same algorithm, at a bit rate of 243 Mb/s. Its
a 16:9 high definition pic- a data rate of 360 Mb/s. interface did not support ten-
ture). The resulting sampling Serial Digital Video bit precision signals, and
rate for luminance is there were some difficulties
Parallel connection of digital
18 MHz. This system pro- in producing reliable, cost
equipment is practical only
vides the same spatial resolu- effective, integrated circuits.
for relatively small installa-
tion as Rec. 601 4:3 images; The block coding based inter-
tions, and there’s a clear
but existing equipment face was abandoned and has
need for transmission over a
designed only for 13.5 MHz been replaced by an interface
single coaxial cable. This is
cannot be used. The addi- with channel coding that
not simple as the data rate is
tional resolution of this uses scrambling and conver-
high, and if the signal were
method may be advantageous sion to NRZI. The serial inter-
transmitted serially without
when some quality overhead face has been standardized as
modification, reliable recov-
is desired for post produc- SMPTE 259M and EBU Tech.
ery would be very difficult.
tion or when up-conversion 3267, and is defined for both
The serial signal must be
to a high-definition system is component and composite
modified prior to transmis-
contemplated. signals including embedded
sion to ensure that there are
SMPTE 267M provides for digital audio.
sufficient edges for reliable
both the 13.5 MHz and clock recovery, to minimize Conceptually, the serial digital
18 MHz systems. Because interface is much like a carrier
system for studio applica-
tions. Baseband audio and
V IDEO video signals are digitized and
combined on the serial digital
A NALOG TO “carrier” as shown in Figure
D IGITAL S ERIAL D IGITAL 2-11. (It’s not strictly a carrier
C ONVERSION V IDEO “C ARRIER” system in that it’s a baseband
& digital signal, not a signal
D IGITAL DATA 143 Mb/s NTSC modulated on a carrier.) The
F ORMATTING
177 Mb/s PAL
bit rate (carrier frequency) is
A UDIO determined by the clock rate
270 Mb/s CCIR 601 of the digital data: 143 Mb/s
360 Mb/s 16:9 component
for NTSC, 177 Mb/s for PAL
and 270 Mb/s for Rec. 601
component digital. The
widescreen (16:9) component
Figure 2-11. The carrier concept. system defined in SMPTE 267
will produce a bit rate of
360 Mb/s.
Parallel In
Parallel data representing the
MSB LSB Serial Out
samples of the analog signal
10 MSB is processed as shown in Fig-
Shift NRZ Scrambled ure 2-12 to create the serial
Data Encoder
LSB Register Scrambler NRZI digital data stream. The par-
allel clock is used to load
sample data into a shift regis-
Clock Load Data Shift Data G1 (x) = x9 + x4 + 1
ter, and a times-ten multiple
G2(x) = x + 1 of the parallel clock shifts
the bits out, LSB (least signif-
icant bit) first, for each 10-bit
x 10
10 x Fclock
data word. If only 8 bits of
Fclock
data are available at the
Figure 2-12. Parallel-to-serial conversion.
input, the serializer places

page 8
zeros in the two LSBs to parallel component interface ing at the serial receiver,
complete the 10-bit word. provide unique sequences which should also remove
Component signals do not that can be identified in the the TRS from the received
need further processing as serial domain. The parallel serial signal.
the SAV and EAV signals on composite interface does not The composite parallel inter-
the parallel interface provide have such signals, so it is face does not provide for
unique sequences that can be necessary to insert a suitable transmission of ancillary
identified in the serial timing reference signal (TRS) data, and the transmission of
domain to permit word fram- into the parallel signal before sync and burst means that
ing. If ancillary data such as serialization. A diagram of less room is available for
audio has been inserted into the serial digital NTSC hori- insertion of data. Upon con-
the parallel signal, this data zontal interval is shown in version from parallel to
will be carried by the serial Figure 2-13. The horizontal serial, the sync tips may be
interface. The serial interface interval for serial digital PAL used. However, the data
may be used with normal would be similar except that space in NTSC is sufficient
video coaxial cable. the sample location is for four channels of AES/EBU
The conversion from parallel slightly different on each digital audio. Ancillary data
to serial for composite signals line, building up two extra such as audio may be added
is somewhat more complex. samples per field. A three- prior to serialization, and
As mentioned above, the word TRS is inserted in the this would normally be per-
SAV and EAV signals on the sync tip to enable word fram- formed by the same co-pro-
cessor that inserts the TRS.
Following the serialization of
the parallel information the
data stream is scrambled by a
mathematical algorithm then
encoded into NRZI (non-
return to zero inverted) by a
concatenation of the follow-
ing two functions:
G1(X) = X9 + X4 + 1
G2(X) = X + 1
At the receiver the inverse of
this algorithm is used in the
deserializer to recover the
correct data. In the serial dig-
ital transmission system, the
clock is contained in the data
as opposed to the parallel
Figure 2-13. NTSC horizontal interval. system where there’s a sepa-
rate clock line. By scram-
1 1 1 1 bling the data, an abundance
NRZ of transitions is assured as
o o o o o o o required for clock recovery.
The mathematics of scram-
NRZI bling and descrambling lead
to some specialized test sig-
nals for serial digital systems
NRZ all "0"s that are discussed later in
this guide.
NRZI all "highs" or "lows" Encoding into NRZI makes
the serial data stream polar-
ity insensitive. NRZ (non
return to zero, an old digital
NRZ all "1"s data tape term) is the familiar
circuit board logic level, high
NRZI 1/2 clock freq is a “1” and low is a “0.” For
either polarity a transmission system it’s
convenient to not require a
certain polarity of the signal
Clock Freq at the receiver. As shown in
Data detect on
rising edge Figure 2-14, a data transition
is used to represent each “1”
Figure 2-14. NRZ and NRZI relationship.

page 9
and there’s no transition for a resampling of digital rates. composite-to-component for-
data “0.” The result’s that it’s Strictly speaking, rate con- mat converter provides a rea-
only necessary to detect tran- version is taking one sample sonable alternative.
sitions; this means either rate and making another After post-production work,
polarity of the signal may be sample rate out of it. For our component digital often
used. Another result of NRZI purposes, we’ll use the term needs to be converted to
encoding is that a signal of “format conversion” to mean composite digital. Sources
all “1”s now produces a tran- both the encode/decode step that are component digital
sition every clock interval and resampling of digital may be converted for input
and results in a square wave rates. The format conversion to a composite digital
at one-half the clock fre- sequence depends on direc- switcher or effects machine.
quency. However, “0”s pro- tion. For component to com- Or a source from a compo-
duce no transition, which posite, the usual sequence is nent digital telecine may be
leads to the need for scram- rate conversion followed by converted for input to a com-
bling. At the receiver, the ris- encoding. For composite to posite digital suite. Further-
ing edge of a square wave at component, the sequence is more, tapes produced in
the clock frequency would be decoding followed by rate component digital may need
used for data detection. conversion. See Figure 2-15. to be distributed or archived
Rate Conversion – Format It’s much easier to do pro- in composite digital.
Conversion duction in component The two major contributors
because it isn’t necessary to to the quality of this process
When moving between com-
wait for every color framing are the encoding or decoding
ponent digital and composite
boundary (four fields for process and the sample rate
digital in either direction,
NTSC and eight for PAL) to conversion. If either one is
there are two steps: the
match two pieces of video to- faulty, the quality of the final
actual encoding or decoding,
gether; instead, they can be product suffers. In order to
and the conversion of the
matched every two fields accurately change the digital
sample rate from one stan-
(motion frame). This pro- sample rate, computations
dard to the other. The digital
vides four times the opportu- must be made between two
sample rates for these two
nity. Additionally, compo- different sample rates and in-
formats are different:
nent is a higher quality for- terpolations must be calcu-
13.5 MHz for component dig-
mat since luminance and lated between the physical
ital and 14.3 MHz for NTSC
chrominance are handled location of the source pixel
composite digital (17.7 MHz
separately. To the extent pos- data and the physical loca-
for PAL). This second step is
sible, origination for compo- tion of destination pixel data.
called “rate conversion.”
nent environment produc- Of the 709,379 pixel loca-
Often the term rate conver-
tion should be accomplished tions in a PAL composite
sion is used to mean both
component. A high quality digital frame, all except one
encoding/decoding and
must be mapped (calculated).
In order to accomplish this
computationally intense con-
version, an extremely accu-
rate algorithm must be used.
If the algorithm is accurate
enough to deal with PAL
conversions, NTSC conver-
sions using the same algo-
rithm are simple. To ensure
quality video, a sophisticated
algorithm must be employed
and the hardware must pro-
duce precise coefficients and
minimize rounding errors.

Figure 2-15. Format conversion.

page 10
3. Digital Audio
AES/EBU Audio Data Format between 100 and 110 dB. the transmission line, facili-
AES digital audio (also Using the above formula for tate clock recovery, and make
known as AES/EBU) con- an SNR of 110 dB, this sys- the interface polarity insensi-
forms to the specification tem has an equivalent 18.3- tive, the data is channel
AES3 (ANSI 4.40) titled “AES bit resolution. coded as biphase-mark. The
recommended practice for An AES digital audio signal preambles specifically violate
digital audio engineering – always consists of two chan- the biphase-mark rules for
Serial transmission format for nels which may be distinctly easy recognition and to
two-channel linearly repre- separate audio material or ensure synchronization.
sented digital audio data.” stereophonic audio. There’s When digital audio is embed-
AES/EBU digital audio is the also a provision for single- ded in the serial digital video
result of cooperation between channel operation (mono- data stream, the start of the
the Audio Engineering Soci- phonic) where the second 192-frame block is indicated
ety and the European Broad- digital data channel is either by the so-called “Z” bit
casting Union. identical to the first or has which corresponds to the
data set to logical “0.” For- occurrence of the Z-type pre-
When discussing digital amble.
audio, one of the important matting of the AES data is
considerations is the number shown in Figure 3-1. Each The validity bit indicates
of bits per sample. Where sample is carried by a sub- whether the audio sample
video operates with 8 or 10 frame containing: 20 bits of bits in the sub-frame are suit-
bits per sample, audio imple- sample data, 4 bits of auxil- able for conversion to an ana-
mentations range from 16 to iary data (which may be used log audio signal. User data is
24 bits to provide the desired to extend the sample to 24 provided to carry other infor-
dynamic range and signal-to- bits), 4 other bits of data and mation, such as time code.
noise ratio (SNR). The basic a preamble. Two sub-frames Channel status data contains
formula for determining the make up a frame which con- information associated with
SNR for digital audio is: tains one sample from each of each audio channel. There
the two channels. are three levels of implemen-
SNR = (6.02 * n) + 1.76
Frames are further grouped tation of the channel status
where “n” is the number of into 192-frame blocks which data: minimum, standard,
bits per sample define the limits of user data and enhanced. The standard
For a 16-bit system, the maxi- and channel status data implementation is recom-
mum theoretical SNR would be blocks. A special preamble mended for use in profession-
(6.02 * 16) + 1.76 = 98.08 dB; indicates the channel identity al television applications,
for an 18-bit system, the SNR for each sample (X or Y hence the channel status data
would be 110.2 dB; and for a preamble) and the start of a will contain information
20-bit device, 122.16 dB. A 192-frame block (Z pream- about signal emphasis, sam-
well-designed 20-bit ADC ble). To minimize the direct- pling frequency, channel
probably offers a value current (DC) component on mode (stereo, mono, etc.), use
of auxiliary bits (extend
audio data to 24 bits or other
32 bits
use), and a CRC (cyclic
redundancy code) for error
Preamble X, Y or Z, 4 bits
checking of the total channel
Sample Data status block.
20 bits
Embedded Audio
Auxiliary Data 4 bits One of the important advan-
Audio sample validity tages of SDI (Serial Digital
Subframe Structure User bit data Interconnect) is the ability to
Audio channel status embed (multiplex) several
Subframe parity channels of digital audio in
Frame Structure the digital video. This is par-
ticularly useful in large sys-
Y Channel B Z Channel A Y Channel B X Channel A Y Channel B tems where separate routing
of digital audio becomes a
Subframe 1 Subframe 2 cost consideration and the
assurance that the audio is
Frame 191 Frame 0 Frame 1
associated with the appropri-
Start of 192 frame block ate video is an advantage. In
smaller systems, such as a
Figure 3-1. AES audio data formatting.
post production suite, it’s

page 11
generally more economical to least four channels of audio using this method for both
maintain separate audio thus in the composite serial digi- composite and component
eliminating the need for tal signal which has limited signals. As engineers were
numerous mux (multiplexer) ancillary data space. A basic using the SMPTE 259M spec-
and demux (demultiplexer) form of embedded audio for ifications for their designs, it
modules. In developing the composite video is docu- became clear that a more
SDI standard, SMPTE 259M, mented in SMPTE 259M and definitive document was
one of the key considerations there’s a significant amount needed. A draft proposed
was the ability to embed at of equipment in the field standard is being developed
for embedded audio which
Table 3-1. NTSC Digital Ancillary Data Space includes such things as dis-
Pulse Tip Words Per Frame Total tribution of audio samples
within the available compos-
Horizontal 55 507 27,885
ite digital ancillary data
Equalizing 21 24 504 space, the ability to carry 24-
Broad 376 12 4,512 bit audio, methods to handle
Total 10-bit words/frame 32,901 non-synchronous clocking
and clock frequencies other
than 48 kHz, and specifica-
tions for embedding audio in
TRS-ID Ancillary Data Space (not to scale)
component digital video.
Ancillary data space. Com-
posite digital video allows
V H
Scan ancillary data only in its
Direction
serial form and then only in
Vertical

Vertical
the tips of synchronizing sig-
nals. Ancillary data is not
Active V ideo Active V ideo carried in parallel composite
Blanking

Blanking digital as parallel data is sim-


ply a digital representation of
the analog signal. Figures
3-2 and 3-3 show the ancil-
lary data space available in
composite digital signals
which includes horizontal
Figure 3-2. Composite ancillary data space. sync tip, vertical broad
pulses, and vertical equaliz-
ing pulses.
A small amount of the hori-
zontal sync tip space is
reserved for TRS-ID (timing
reference signal and identifi-
790 - 794 795 - 849 cation) which is required for
TRS-ID ANC Data - 55 words digital word framing in the
Not to scale
H-sync (all lines except vertical sync) deserialization process. Since
composite digital ancillary
data is only available in the
serial domain, it consists of
10-bit words, whereas both
composite and component
parallel interconnects may be
790 - 794 795 - 260 340 - 715
either 8 or 10 bits. A sum-
TRS-ID ANC Data - 376 words
Vertical sync lines only
ANC Data - 376 words
Vertical sync lines only
mary of composite digital
ancillary data space for NTSC
is shown in Table 3-1. Thirty
frames/second will provide
9.87 Mb/second of ancillary
data which is enough for four
channels of embedded audio
790 - 794 795 - 815 340 - 360 with a little capacity left over.
PAL has slightly more ancil-
TRS-ID ANC Data - 21 words ANC Data - 21 words
Vertical equalizing pulses only Vertical equalizing pulses only lary data space due to the
higher sample rate; however
Figure 3-3. NTSC available ancillary data words.

page 12
embedded audio for digital HANC (horizontal ancillary channels of embedded audio
PAL is rarely used. data) and VANC (vertical are specified for HANC in
There’s considerably more ancillary data) with the the proposed standard and
ancillary data space available SMPTE defining the use of there’s room for significantly
in component digital video HANC and the EBU defining more data.
as shown in Figure 3-4. All the use of VANC. Word Not all of the VANC data
of the horizontal and vertical lengths are 10-bit for HANC space is available. For in-
blanking intervals are avail- specifically so it can carry stance, the luminance sam-
able except for the small embedded audio in the same ples on one line per field are
amount required for EAV format as for composite digi- reserved for DVITC (digital
(end of video) and SAV (start tal and 8-bit for VANC vertical interval time code)
of video) synchronizing specifically so it can be car- and the chrominance sam-
words. ried by D-1 VTRs (on those ples on that line may be
vertical interval lines that are devoted to video index. Also,
The ancillary data space has recorded). Total data space is it would be wise to avoid
been divided into two types shown in Table 3-2. Up to 16 using the vertical interval
switch line and perhaps, the
Table 3-2. Component Digital Ancillary Data Space subsequent line where data
525 line Words Per Frame Total Rate Mb/s might be lost due to relock
HANC 268 525 140,700 42.2 after the switch occurs.
VANC 1440 39 56,160 13.5 Ancillary data formatting.
Ancillary data is formatted
Total words 198,860 55.7
into packets prior to multi-
625 line Words Per Frame Total Rate Mb/s plexing it into the video data
stream as shown in Figure
HANC 282 625 176,250 44.1
3-5. Each data block may
VANC 1440 49 70.560 14.1 contain up to 255 user data
Total words 246,810 58.2 words provided there’s
enough total data space
available to include five
(composite) or seven (compo-
nent) words of overhead. For
composite digital, only the
vertical sync (broad) pulses
have enough room for the
full 255 words. Multiple data
packets may be placed in
individual ancillary data
spaces, thus providing a
rather flexible data commu-
nications channel.
At the beginning of each data
packet is a header using
word values that are exclud-
ed for digital video data and
reserved for synchronizing
purposes. For composite
Figure 3-4. Component ancillary data space. video, a single header word
of 3FCh is used whereas for
component video, a three-
word header 000h 3FFh
Data Block Number (1 word) 3FFh is used. Each type of
data packet is identified with
User Data a different Data ID word.
255 words maximum Several different Data ID
words are defined to orga-
Data Count (1 word) nize the various data packets
Data ID (1 word) Check Sum (1 word) used for embedded audio.
The Data Block Number
Data Header (DBN) is an optional counter
1 word composite, 3FC that can be used to provide
3 words component, 000 3FF 3FF sequential order to ancillary
data packets allowing a
Figure 3-5. Ancillary data formatting. receiver to determine if

page 13
there’s missing data. As an sum which is used to detect This basic embedded audio
example, with embedded errors in the data packet. corresponds to Level A in the
audio the DBN may be used Basic embedded audio. proposed embedded audio
to detect the occurrence of a Embedded audio defined in standard. Other levels of
vertical interval switch, SMPTE 259M provides four operation provide more
thereby allowing the receiver channels of 20-bit audio data channels, other sampling fre-
to process the audio data to sampled at 48 kHz with the quencies, and additional
remove the likely transient sample clock locked to the information about the audio
“click” or “pop.” Just prior to television signal. Although data. Basic embedded audio
the data is the Data Count specified in the composite data packet formatting
word indicating the amount digital part of the standard, derived from AES audio is
of data in the packet. Finally, the same method is also used shown in Figure 3-6.
following the data is a check- for component digital video. Two AES channel-pairs are
shown as the source; how-
ever it’s possible for each of
Table 3-3. Embedded Audio Bit Distribution the four embedded audio
Bit X X+1 X+2 channels to come from a dif-
ferent AES signal (specifi-
b9 not b8 not b8 not b8 cally implemented in some
b8 aud 5 aud 14 Parity D-1 digital VTRs). The Audio
b7 aud 4 aud 13 C Data Packet contains one or
more audio samples from up
b6 aud 3 aud 12 U
to four audio channels. 23
b5 aud 2 aud 11 V bits (20 audio bits plus the C,
b4 aud 1 aud 10 aud 19 (msb) U, and V bits) from each AES
b3 aud 0 aud 9 aud 18 sub-frame are mapped into
three 10-bit video words (X,
b2 ch bit-1 aud 8 aud 17
X+1, X+2) as shown in Table
b1 ch bit-2 aud 7 aud 16 3-3.
b0 Z-bit aud 6 aud 15 Bit-9 is always not Bit-8 to
ensure that none of the
AES Channel-Pair 2
excluded word values (3FFh-
3FCh or 003h-000h) are used.
Y Channel B Z Channel A Y Channel B X Channel A Y Channel B The Z-bit is set to “1” corre-
sponding to the first frame of
Subframe 1 Subframe 2
the 192-frame AES block.
Frame 191 Frame 0 Frame 1
Channels of embedded audio
AES Channel-Pair 1 are essentially independent
(although they,re always
Y Channel B Z Channel A Y Channel B X Channel A Y Channel B
transmitted in pairs) so the
Subframe 1 Subframe 2
Z-bit is set to a “1” in each
Frame 191 Frame 0 Frame 1 Frame 3
channel even if derived from
the same AES source. C, U,
and V bits are mapped from
the AES signal; however the
AES Subframe 32 bits
parity bit is not the AES par-
Subframe parity
ity bit. Bit-8 in word X+2 is
Preamble X, Y or Z, 4 bits Audio channel status
User bit data even parity for bits 0-8 in all
Auxiliary Data 4 bits
Audio sample validity three words.
20 bits Sample Data
There are several restrictions
AES 1 chnl B (subframe 2) regarding distribution of the
Embedded Channel 2 audio data packets although
there’s a “grandfather clause”
20 + 3 bits of data is in the proposed standard to
mapped into 3 ANC words account for older equipment
Audio Data Packet that may not observe all the
restrictions. Audio data
Blk Num
Data ID

Check
Count

AES 1, Chnl A AES 1, Chnl B AES 2, Chnl A


Data

Sum
Data

Channel 1 Channel 2 Channel 3 packets are not transmitted


x, x+1, x+2 x, x+1, x+2 x, x+1, x+2
in the horizontal ancillary
data space following the nor-
Data Header mal vertical interval switch
Composite, 3FC as defined in RP 168. They’re
Component, 000 3FF 3FF
also not transmitted in the
Figure 3-6. Basic embedded audio. ancillary data space desig-

page 14
nated for error detection four audio samples per chan- • Providing audio-to-video
checkwords defined in nel in each audio data delay information for each
RP 165. For composite digital packet. channel
video, audio data packets are Extended embedded audio. • Documenting Data IDs to
not transmitted in equalizing Full-featured embedded allow up to 16 channels of
pulses. Taking into account audio defined in the pro- audio in component digital
these restrictions “data posed standard includes: systems
should be distributed as
• Carrying the 4 AES auxil- • Counting “audio frames”
evenly as possible through-
iary bits (which may be for 525 line systems.
out the video field.” The rea-
used to extend the audio To provide these features,
son for this last statement is
samples to 24-bits) two additional data packets
to minimize receiver buffer
size which is an important • Allowing non-synchronous are defined. Extended Data
issue for transmitting 24-bit clock operation Packets carry the 4 AES aux-
audio in composite digital • Allowing sampling fre- iliary bits formatted such
systems. For basic, Level A, quencies other than 48 kHz that one video word contains
this results in either three or the auxiliary data for two
audio samples as shown in
Figure 3-7. Extended data
Table 3-4. Data IDs For Up To 16-channel Operation packets must be located in
Audio Audio Data Extended Audio Control the same ancillary data space
Channels Packet Data Packet Packet as the associated audio data
Group 1 1-4 1FF 1FE 1EF packets and must follow the
audio data packets.
Group 2 5-8 1FD 2FC 2EE
The Audio Control Packet
Group 3 9-12 1FB 2FA 2ED
(shown in Figure 3-8.) is
Group 4 13-16 2F9 1F8 1EC transmitted once per field in
the second horizontal ancil-
lary data space after the ver-
Data ID 2FF (1FD, 1FB, 2F9) Audio Data Packet tical interval switch point. It
contains information on
Blk Num

AES 1, ch A AES 1, ch B AES 2, ch A


Count

Check

audio frame number, sam-


Data

Sum
Data

Channel 1 Channel 2 Channel 3


x, x+1, x+2 x, x+1, x+2 x, x+1, x+2 pling frequency, active chan-
nels, and relative audio-to-
video delay of each channel.
Data Header
Composite, 3FC Transmission of audio con-
Component, trol packets is optional for
000 3FF 3FF
Extended Data Packet 48 kHz synchronous opera-
Auxiliary 4 bits
tion and required for all
Blk Num

other modes of operation


Count

Check
AUX
AUX

AUX
AUX
AUX

AUX
Data

Sum
Data

(since it contains the infor-


mation as to what mode is
being used).
Data ID 1FE (2FC, 2FA, 1F8)
Audio frame numbers are an
Figure 3-7. Extended embedded audio.
artifact of 525 line, 29.97
frame/second operation. In
that system there are exactly
Data Header 8008 audio samples in
Component 000 3FF 3FF _ Delay (audio-video) exactly five frames, which
+
Composite 3FC means there’s a non-integer
ch 1 (&2) ch 3 (&4) ch 2 =\ 1 ch 4 =\ 3 number of samples per
Data ID
Data block number frame. An audio frame
Data count sequence is the number of
frames for an integer number
of samples (in this case five)
CHK SUM
DELC0
DELC1
DELC2
DELD0
DELD1
DELA0
DELA1

DELD2
DELA2
DELB0
DELB1
DELB2

RSRV
RSRV
AF1-2
AF3-4
RATE
ACT
DBN

and the audio frame number


DID

DC

indicates where in the


sequence a particular frame
belongs. This is important
Audio frame Reserved when switching between
number Active Words sources because certain
chnls 1 & 2 Sampling Channels Checksum equipment (most notably dig-
chnls 3 & 4 Frequency ital VTRs) require consistent
synchronous operation to
Figure 3-8. Audio control packet formatting. prevent buffer over/under

page 15
flow. Where frequent switch- dio ancillary data. The case A receiver sample buffer is
ing is planned, receiving is considerably different for needed to store samples nec-
equipment can be designed composite digital video due essary to supply the continu-
to add or drop a sample fol- to the exclusion of data in ous output required during
lowing a switch in the four equalizing pulses and, even the time of the equalizing
out of five cases where the more important, the data pulses and other excluded
sequence is broken. The packet distribution required lines (the vertical interval
challenge in such a system is for extended audio. For this switch line and the subse-
to detect that a switch has reason the proposed standard quent line). When only 20-bit
occurred. This can be facili- requires a receiver buffer of audio is required the “even
tated by use of the data block 64 samples per channel with distribution of samples” dic-
number in the ancillary data a grandfather clause of 48 tates that some horizontal
format structure and by samples per channel to warn lines carry four samples per
including an optional frame designers of the limitations channel resulting in a rather
counter with the unused bits in older equipment. In the modest buffer size of 48 sam-
in the audio frame number proposed standard, Level A ples or less depending on the
word of the audio control defines a sample distribution type of buffer. Using only the
packet. allowing use of a 48 sample- first broad pulse of each ver-
Audio delay information per-channel receiver buffer tical sync line, four or five
contained in the audio con- while other levels generally samples in each broad pulse
trol packet uses a default require the use of the speci- will provide a satisfactory,
channel-pair mode. That is, fied 64 sample buffer. Deter- even distribution. This is
delay-A (DELA0-2) is for mination of buffer size is known as Level A. However,
both channel 1 and channel analyzed in this section for if 24-bit audio is used or if
2 unless the delay for chan- digital NTSC systems, how- the sample distribution is to
nel 2 is not equal to channel ever the result is much the allow for 24-bit audio even if
1. In that case, the delay for same for digital PAL systems. not used, there can be no
channel 2 is located in delay- Synchronous sampling at more than three samples per
C. Sampling frequency must 48 kHz provides exactly 8008 horizontal ancillary data
be the same for each channel samples in five frames which space for a four-channel sys-
in a pair, hence the data in is 8008 ÷ (5 x 525) = 3.051 tem. The first broad pulse of
“ACT” provides only two samples per line. Therefore each vertical sync line is
values, one for channels 1 most lines may carry three required to carry 16 or 17
and 2 and the other for chan- samples per channel while samples per channel to get
nels 3 and 4. some should carry four sam- the best possible “even dis-
ples per channel. For digital tribution.” This results in a
In order to provide for up to
NTSC, each horizontal sync buffer requirement of 80
16 channels of audio in com-
tip has space for 55 ancillary samples per channel, or less,
ponent digital systems the
data words. Table 3-5 shows depending on the type of
embedded audio is divided
how those words are used for buffer. To meet the 64 sam-
into audio groups corre-
four-channel, 20-bit and 24- ple-per-channel buffer, a
sponding to the basic four-
bit audio (overhead includes smart buffer is required.
channel operation. Each of
the three data packet types header, data ID, data count, There are two common types
are assigned four Data IDs as etc.). Since it would require of buffer that are equivalent
shown in Table 3-4. 24 more video words to carry for the purpose of under-
one additional sample per standing requirements to
Receiver buffer size. In com-
channel for four channels of meet the proposed standard.
ponent digital video, the re-
24-bit audio and that would One is the FIFO (first in first
ceiver buffer in an audio exceed the 55-word space, out) buffer and the other is a
demultiplexer is not a criti- there can be no more than circular buffer. Smart buffers
cal issue since there’s much
three samples per line of 24- have the following synchro-
ancillary data space available
bit audio. nized load abilities:
and few lines excluding au-
• FIFO Buffer – hold off
Table 3-5. Maximum Samples Per NTSC Sync Tip “reads” until a specific
number of samples are in
4-Channels 20-bit Audio 24-bit Audio the buffer (requires a
3-samples 4-samples 3-samples
counter) AND neither read
Audio Data or write until a specified
Overhead 5 5 5 time (requires vertical
Sample data 36 48 36 sync).
Extended Data • Circular Buffer – set the
Overhead 5 read address to be a certain
Auxiliary data 6 number of samples after
TOTAL 41 53 47
the write address at a spec-

page 16
ified time (requires vertical audio or for automatic opera- instances where it’s desirable
sync). tion of both sample sizes. to break away some of the
Using a smart buffer the min- Therefore, a 64 sample-per- audio sources, the digital
imum sizes are 24 samples channel smart buffer is audio can be demultiplexed
per channel for 20-bit opera- required to meet the specifi- and switched separately via
tion and 40 samples per cations of the proposed an AES/EBU digital audio
channel for 24-bit operation. standard. routing switcher.
Because of the different Systemizing AES/EBU audio. At the receiving end, after
requirements for the two Serial digital video and the multiplexed audio has
types of sample distribution, audio are becoming com- passed through a serial digi-
the minimum smart buffer monplace in production and tal routing switcher, it may
size for either number of bits post-production facilities as be necessary to extract the
per sample is 57 samples. well as television stations. In audio from the video so that
Therefore, a 64 sample-per- many cases, the video and editing, audio sweetening, or
channel smart buffer should audio are married sources; other processing can be ac-
be adequate. and it may be desirable to complished. This requires a
In the case of a not-so-smart keep them together and treat demultiplexer that strips off
buffer, read and write them as a single serial digital the AES/EBU audio from the
addresses for a circular data stream. This has, for one serial digital video. The out-
buffer must be far enough example, the advantage of put of a typical demulti-
apart to handle either a build being able to keep the signals plexer has a serial digital
up of 40 samples or a deple- in the digital domain and video BNC as well as connec-
tion of 40 samples. This switch them together with a tors for the two-stereo-pair
means the buffer size must serial digital video routing AES/EBU digital audio
be 80 samples for 24-bit switcher. In the occasional signals.

page 17
page 18
4. System Hardware and Issues
Cable Selection Connectors designed specifically for
The best grades of precision Until recently, all BNC con- serial digital applications.
analog video cables exhibit nectors used in television had Terminations and Loop-throughs
low losses from very low fre- a characteristic impedance of The serial digital standard
quencies (near DC) to around 50 ohms. BNC connectors of specifies transmitter and
10 MHz. In the serial digital the 75-ohm variety were receiver return loss to be
world, cable losses in this available, but were not physi- greater than 15 dB up to
portion of the spectrum are of cally compatible with 50-ohm 270 MHz. That is, termina-
less consequence but still connectors. The impedance tions should be 75 ohms with
important. It’s in the higher “mismatch” to coax is of little no significant reactive com-
frequencies associated with consequence at analog video ponent to 270 MHz. Clearly
transmission rates of 143, frequencies because the this frequency is related to
177, 270, or 360 Mb/s where wavelength of the signals is component digital, hence a
losses are considerable. For- many times longer than the lower frequency might be
tunately, the robustness of length of the connector. But suitable for NTSC and that
the serial digital signal makes with serial digital’s high data may be considered in the
it possible to equalize these rate (and attendant short future. As can be seen by the
losses quite easily. So when wavelengths), the impedance rather modest 15 dB specifi-
converting from analog to of the connector must be con- cation, return loss is not a
digital, the use of existing, sidered. In general, the length critical issue in serial digital
quality cable runs should of a simple BNC connector video systems. It’s more
pose no problem. doesn’t have significant effect important at short cable
The most important charac- on the serial digital signal. lengths where the reflection
teristic of coaxial cable to be Several inches of 50-ohm could distort the signal rather
used for serial digital is its connection, such as a number than at long lengths where
loss at 1/2 the clock fre- of barrels or short coax, the reflected signal receives
quency of the signal to be would have to be used for more attenuation.
transmitted. That value will any noticeable effect. In the
specific case of a serial trans- Most serial digital receivers
determine the maximum are directly terminated in
cable length that can be mitter or receiver, the active
devices associated with the order to avoid return loss
equalized by a given receiver. problems. Since the receiver
It’s also important that the chassis connector need signif-
icant impedance matching. active circuits don’t look like
frequency response loss in dB 75 ohms, circuitry must be
be approximately
__ propor- This could easily include
included to provide a good
tional to 1/√ f down to fre- making a 50-ohm connector
resistive termination and low
quencies below 5 MHz. Some look like 75 ohms over the
frequency band of interest. return loss. Some of today’s
of the common cables in use equipment does not provide
are the following: Good engineering practice
tells us to avoid impedance return loss values meeting the
PSF 2/3 UK specification for the higher
mismatches and use 75-ohm
Belden 8281 USA and Japan frequencies. This hasn’t
components wherever possi-
F&G 1.0/6.6 Germany caused any known system
ble and that rule is being fol-
These cables all have excel- lowed in the development of problems; however, good en-
lent performance for serial new equipment for serial gineering practice should pre-
digital signals. Cable manu- digital. vail here as well.
facturers are seizing the Active loop-throughs are very
opportunity to introduce Patch Panels
common in serial digital
new, low-loss, foam dielectric The same holds true for other equipment because they’re
cables specifically designed “passive” elements in the sys- relatively simple and have
for serial digital. Examples of tem such as patch panels. In signal regeneration qualities
alternative video cables are order to avoid reflections similar to a reclocking distri-
Belden 1505A which, caused by impedance discon- bution amplifier. Also, they
although thinner, more flexi- tinuities, these elements provide isolation between
ble, and less expensive than should also have a character- input and output. However, if
8281, has a higher perfor- istic impedance of 75 ohms. the equipment power goes off
mance at the frequencies that Existing 50-ohm patch panels for any reason, the connec-
are more critical for serial will probably be adequate in tion is broken. Active loop-
digital signals. A recent many instances, but new throughs also have the same
development specifically for installations should use 75- need for care in circuit
serial digital video is Belden ohm patch panels. Several impedance matching as men-
1694A with lower loss than patch panel manufacturers tioned above.
1505A. now offer 75-ohm versions

page 19
Passive loop-throughs are sional applications. When instead of 75-ohm unbal-
both possible and practical. AES/EBU digital audio anced and reduce the 3- to
Implementations used in se- evolved, it was natural to 10-volt signal to 1 volt. The
rial digital waveform moni- assume that the traditional resulting signal now has the
tors have return loss greater analog audio transmission same characteristics as ana-
that 25 dB up to the clock cable and connectors could log video, and traditional
frequency. This makes it pos- still be used. The scope of analog video distribution
sible to monitor the actual AES3 covers digital audio amplifiers, routing switchers,
signal being received by the transmission of up to 100 and video patch panels can
operational equipment or meters, which can be han- be used. Costs of making up
unit-under-test and not sub- dled adequately with the coaxial cable with BNCs
stitute the monitor receiver. shielded, balanced twisted- is also less than multicon-
The most important use of pair interconnection. ductor cable with XLRs.
passive loop-throughs is for Because AES/EBU audio has Tests have indicated that
system diagnostics and fault a much wider bandwidth EMI emissions are also
finding where it’s necessary than analog audio, cable reduced with coaxial
to observe the signal in the must be selected with care. distribution.
troubled path. If a loop- The impedance, in order to Signal Distribution, Reclocking
through is to be used for meet the AES3 specification, Although a video signal may
monitoring, it’s important requires 110-ohm source and be digital, the real world
that it be passive loop- load impedances. The stan- through which that signal
through for two reasons. dard has no definition for a passes is analog. Conse-
First, serial transmitters with bridging load, although loop- quently, it’s important to con-
multiple outputs usually through inputs, as used in sider the analog distortions
have separate active devices analog audio, are theoreti- that affect a digital signal.
on each output, therefore cally possible. Improperly These include frequency
monitoring one output terminated cables may cause response rolloff caused by
doesn’t necessarily indicate signal reflections and subse- cable attenuation, phase dis-
the quality of another output quent data errors. tortion, noise, clock jitter,
as it did in the days of resis- The relatively high frequen- and baseline shift due to AC
tive fan-out of analog signals. cies of the AES/EBU signals coupling. While a digital sig-
Second, when an active loop- cannot travel over twisted- nal will retain the ability to
through is used, loss of pair cables as easily as ana- communicate its data despite
power in the monitoring log audio. Capacitance and a certain degree of distortion,
device will turn off the sig- high-frequency losses cause there’s a point beyond which
nal. This would be disastrous high-frequency rolloff. Even- the data will not be recover-
in an operational situation. If tually, signal edges become able. Long cable runs are the
an available passive loop- so rounded and amplitude so main cause of signal distor-
through isn’t being used, it’s low that the receivers can no tion. Most digital equipment
important to make sure the longer tell the “1”s from the provides some form of equal-
termination is 75 ohms with “0”s. This makes the signals ization and regeneration at all
no significant reactive com- undetectable. Typically, inputs in order to compen-
ponent to at least the clock cable lengths are limited to a sate for cable runs of varying
frequency of the serial signal. few hundred feet. XLR con- lengths. Considering the spe-
That old, perhaps “preci- nectors are also specified. cific case of distribution am-
sion,” terminator in your tool Since AES/EBU digital audio plifiers and routing switch-
box may not do the job for has frequencies up to about ers, there are several ap-
serial digital. 6 MHz, there’ve been sugges- proaches that can be used:
Digital Audio Cable and tions to use unbalanced wideband amplifier, wide-
Connector Types coaxial cable with BNC con- band digital amplifier, and
nectors for improved perfor- regenerating digital amplifier.
AES/EBU digital audio has
mance in existing video
raised some interesting ques- Taking the last case first,
installations and for trans-
tions because of its character- regeneration of the digital
missions beyond 100 meters.
istics. In professional appli- signal generally means to
cations, balanced audio has There are two committees recover data from an incom-
traditionally been deemed defining the use of BNC con- ing signal and to retransmit it
necessary in order to avoid nectors for AES/EBU digital with a clean waveform using
hum and other artifacts. Usu- audio. The Audio Engineer- a stable clock source. Regen-
ally twisted, shielded, multi- ing Society has developed eration of a digital signal
conductor audio cable is AES3-ID and SMPTE is allows it to be transmitted
used. The XLR connector developing a similar recom- farther and sustain more ana-
was selected as the connector mended practice. These rec- log degradation than a signal
of choice and is used univer- ommendations will use a which already has accumu-
sally in almost all profes- 110-ohm balanced signal lated some analog distor-

page 20
tions. Regeneration generally several dozen times before a may not, be 6 dB/octave. It’s
uses the characteristics of the parallel regeneration is nec- the difference between the
incoming signal, such as essary. Excessive jitter build in-band and out-of-band
extracted clock, to produce up eventually causes a sys- response that causes the
the output. In serial digital tem to fail; jitter acceptable problem.
video, there are two kinds of to a serial receiver must still In between these two
regeneration: serial and be considered and handled extremes are wideband serial
parallel. from a system standpoint digital routers that don’t
Serial regeneration is sim- which will be discussed reclock the signal. Such non-
plest. It consists of cable later. reclocking routers will gener-
equalization (necessary even Regeneration, where a refer- ally perform adequately at all
for cable lengths of a few ence clock is used to produce clock frequencies for the
meters or less), clock recov- the output, can be performed amount of coax attenuation
ery, data recovery, and re- an unlimited number of given in their specifications.
transmission of the data us- times and will eliminate all However, that specification
ing the recovered clock. A the jitter built up in a series will usually be shorter than
phase locked loop (PLL) with of regeneration operations. for reclocking routers.
an LC (inductor/capacitor) or This type of regeneration System Timing
RC (resistor/capacitor) oscil- happens in major operational
lator regenerates the serial equipment such as VTRs, The need to understand,
clock frequency, a process production switchers (vision plan, and measure signal
called reclocking. mixers) or special effects timing has not been elimi-
units that use external refer- nated in digital video, it’s
Parallel regeneration is more
ences to perform their digital just moved to a different set
complex. It involves three
processing. So the bottom of values and parameters. In
steps: deserialization; paral-
line is, regeneration (or most cases, precise timing
lel reclocking, usually using
reclocking) can be perfect, requirements will be relaxed
a crystal-controlled time
only limited by economic in a digital environment and
base; and serialization.
considerations. will be measured in micro-
Each form of regeneration seconds, lines, and frames
can reduce jitter outside its A completely different rather than nanoseconds. In
PLL bandwidth, but jitter approach to signal distribu- many ways, distribution and
within the loop bandwidth tion is the use of wideband timing is becoming simpler
will be reproduced and may analog routers, but there are with digital processing
accumulate significantly many limitations. It’s true because devices that have
with each regeneration. (For that wideband analog routers digital inputs and outputs
a complete discussion of jit- (100 MHz plus) will pass a can lend themselves to auto-
ter effects and measurements 143 Mb/s serial digital signal. matic input timing compen-
see Section 8.) A serial regen- However, they’re unlikely to sation. However, mixed ana-
erator will have a loop band- have the performance log/digital systems place
width on the order of several required for 270 or 360 Mb/s. additional constraints on the
hundred kilohertz to a few With routers designed for handling of digital signal
megahertz. A parallel regen- wideband
__ analog signals, the timing.
erator will have a much nar- 1/√ f frequency response
characteristics will adversely Relative timing of multiple
rower bandwidth on the
affect the signal. Receivers signals with respect to a ref-
order of several Hertz. There-
intended to work with erence is required in most
fore, a parallel regenerator
SMPTE 259M signals expect systems. At one extreme,
can reduce jitter to a greater
to see a signal transmitted inputs to a composite analog
extent than a serial regenera-
from standard source and production switcher must be
tor, at the expense of greater
attenuated by coaxial cable timed to the nanosecond
complexity. In addition, the
with frequency response range so there will be no sub-
inherent jitter in a crystal
losses. Any deviation from carrier phase errors. At the
controlled timebase (parallel
6 dB/octave rolloff over a other extreme, most digital
regenerator) is much less
bandwidth of 1 MHz up to production switchers allow
than that of an LC or RC
the clock frequency will relative timing between
oscillator timebase (serial
cause improper operation of input signals in the range of
regenerator). Serial regenera-
the automatic equalizer in one horizontal line. Signal-
tion obviously cannot be per-
the serial receiver. In general, to-signal timing requirements
formed an unlimited number
this will be a significant for inputs to digital video
of times because of cumula-
problem because the analog can be placed in three cate-
tive PLL oscillator jitter and
router is designed to have gories:
the fact that the clock is
extracted from the incoming flat response up to a certain 1. Digital equipment with
signal. Serial regeneration bandwidth and then roll off automatic input timing
can typically be performed at some slope that may, or compensation.

page 21
2. Digital equipment without the switching area for field 1. will have to be within one or
automatic input timing (Field 2 switches on line 273 two nanoseconds so the dis-
compensation. for 525 and line 319 for 625.) turbance doesn’t occur.
3. Digital-to-analog convert- The window size is 10 µs Clearly, the downstream
ers without automatic which would imply an blanking approach is
timing compensation. allowable difference in time preferred.
between the two signals of a Finally, the more difficult
In the first case, the signals few microseconds. A pre- case of inputs to DACs with-
must be in the range of the ferred timing difference is out timing compensations
automatic compensation, generally determined by the may require the same accura-
generally about one horizon- reaction of downstream cy as today’s analog systems
tal line. For system installa- equipment to the vertical – in the nanosecond range.
tion and maintenance it’s interval switch. In the case of This will be true where fur-
important to measure the rel- analog routing switchers, a ther analog processing is
ative time of such signals to very tight tolerance is often required, such as used in
ensure they’re within the maintained based on subcar- analog production switchers
automatic timing range with rier phase requirements. For (vision mixers). Alternately,
enough headroom to allow serial digital signals if the analog signal is simply
for any expected changes. microseconds of timing dif- a studio output, this high
Automatic timing adjust- ference may be acceptable. accuracy may not be
ments are a key component At the switch point, clock required.
for digital systems; but they lock of the serial signal will
cannot currently be applied Automatic timing adjust-
be recovered in one or two
to a serial data stream due to ments are a key component
digital words (10 to 20 serial
the high digital frequencies for digital systems; but they
clock periods). However,
involved. A conversion back cannot currently be applied
word framing will, most
to the parallel format for the to a serial data stream due to
likely, be lost causing the sig-
adjustable delay is necessary the high digital frequencies
nal value to assume some
due to the high data rates. involved. A conversion back
random value until the next
Therefore, automatic input to the parallel format for the
synchronizing data (EAV)
timing is not available in all delay is necessary due to the
resets the word framing and
equipment. high data rates. There’s a
produces full synchroniza-
For the second case, signals need for a variety of
tion of the signal at the
are nominally in-time as adjustable delay devices to
receiver. A signal with a ran-
would be expected at the address these new timing
dom value for part of a line is
input to a routing switcher. requirements. These include
clearly not suitable on-line to
SMPTE recommended prac- a multiple-line delay device
a program feed; however
tice RP 168, which applies to and a frame delay device. A
downstream equipment can
both 525 and 625 line opera- frame delay device, of
be designed to blank the
tion, defines a timing win- course, would result in a
undesired portion of the line.
dow on a specific horizontal video delay that could poten-
In the case where the unde-
line where a vertical interval tially create some annoying
sired signal is not elimi-
switch is to be performed. problems with regard to
nated, the serial signal tim-
See Figure 4-1 which shows audio timing and the passing
ing to the routing switcher
of time code through the sys-
tem. Whenever audio and
Switching video signals are processed
Area
through different paths, a
525-line systems, Field 1
35 µs
potential exists for differen-
25 µs tial audio-to-video delay.
The differential delay caused
by embedding audio is insig-
nificant (under 1 ms). How-
525 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 19 20 21 ever, potential problems
occur where frame delays are
Switching used and the video and
Area
audio follow separate paths.
625-line systems, Field 1 35 µs
25 µs

622 623 624 625 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 22 23 24

Figure 4-1. Vertical interval switching area.

page 22
5. Monitoring and Measurements
Test and measurement of evaluation, system installa- nal with features and accu-
serial digital signals can be tion and acceptance testing, racy consistent with today’s
characterized in three differ- system and equipment main- analog baseband signal moni-
ent aspects: usage, methods, tenance, and perhaps most tors. An operational monitor
and operational environment. important, operation. should also include informa-
Types of usage would Requirements for a basic tion about the serial digital
include: designer’s work- operational monitor include signal itself, such as data
bench, manufacturing quality display of the program sig- available, bit errors, and data
assurance, user equipment nals carried by the digital sig- formatting errors. A display
of the actual serial waveform
is not required. Due to the
robust nature of digital video
signals a reduction in the
number of operational moni-
tors may be possible. How-
ever, monitoring of the pro-
gram signal waveform is
required at all locations
where an operator or equip-
ment has the ability to
change program parameters.
The Tektronix WFM 601
Series of serial-component
monitors is shown in Figure
5-1.
Methods for technical evalua-
tion cover several usage areas
that have overlapping re-
quirements. In addition to
the traditional television sys-
tem measurements there’s a
new dimension for test and
measurement – to quantify
Figure 5-1. The WFM 601 Series of serial-component monitors. the various parameters asso-
ciated directly with the serial
waveform. The result is sev-
eral categories of monitoring
and measurement methods to
be considered: program sig-
nal analysis, data analysis,
format verification, transmit-
ter/receiver operation, trans-
mission hardware, and fault
reporting. An equivalent-time
sampling display of the serial
waveform is displayed on the
Tektronix WFM601M Serial
Component Monitor in Fig-
ure 5-2.
Program signal measure-
ments are essentially the
baseband video and audio
measurements that have been
used for years. An important
aspect to these measurements
is that the accuracy of signal
representation is limited by
the number of bits-per-sam-
ple. In analog systems there’s
been a small amount of digi-
tal data present in video sig-
Figure 5-2. Eye-pattern display on WFM601M. nals in the form of Vertical

page 23
Interval Time Code (VITC); (coax, patch panels, etc.) is Because of the well known
but the serial data stream has similar to that used with crash-point type of failure for
much more capacity for data baseband systems except that digital systems, out-of-ser-
other than video. Hence, much wider bandwidths vice testing is also especially
more complete measurement must be considered. important. In order to know
methods are desirable. The third aspect to test and how much headroom is
Digital signal waveform anal- measurement is whether it’s available it’s necessary to
ysis and its effect on trans- in-service or out-of-service. add stressing parameters to
mitter/receiver operation is a All operational monitoring the digital signal in mea-
new requirement in test and must be in-service, which sured amounts until it does
measurement for television means that monitors must be crash, which is certainly not
facilities. Rather than acquire able to give the operator in- acceptable in operational sit-
special equipment for inter- formation about the digital uations.
preting this high speed wave- signal that contains active The next few sections deal
form, appropriate capabili- program material as well as with the details of specific
ties are being added to tradi- the program signal itself. If measurement techniques
tional television test equip- there are problems to be covering monitoring, mea-
ment, helping in the econom- solved, discovering those surements, in-service testing,
ic transition to serial digital with an intermittent nature and out-of-service testing.
television. Testing of passive will also require in-service
transmission components measurements.

page 24
6. Measuring the Serial Signal
Waveform Measurements different paths are due to the Figure 6-1 and displayed on
When viewed on an appro- fact that the digits in the a monitor as shown on the
priate scope or monitor, sev- serial stream vary based on WFM601M Serial Compo-
eral time sweeps (overlaid by the data (high or low states, nent Monitor in Figure 5-2).
the CRT persistence or digi- with or without change at Analog measurements of the
tal sample memory) pro- possible transition times). serial digital waveform start
duces a waveform that fol- The waveform that results is with the specifications of the
lows a number of different known as an eye pattern transmitter output as shown
paths across the screen. The (with two “eyes” shown in in Figure 6-2. Specifications
to be measured are ampli-
tude, risetime, and jitter,
which are defined in the
serial standard, SMPTE
259M. Frequency, or period,
is determined by the televi-
sion sync generator develop-
ing the source signal, not the
serialization process. A unit
interval (UI) is defined as the
time between two adjacent
signal transitions, which is
the reciprocal of clock fre-
quency. The unit interval is
7.0 ns for NTSC, 5.6 ns for
PAL, and 3.7 ns for compo-
nent 525 or 625.
Figure 6-1. Eye pattern display.
A serial receiver determines
if the signal is a “high” or a
“low” in the center of each
eye, thereby detecting the
serial data. As noise and jit-
ter in the signal increase
through the transmission
Jitter channel, certainly the best
0.8 Volts <0.2 UI p-p,
+
_ 10% decision point is in the cen-
10 Hz HPF ter of the eye (as shown in
20% to 80% Figure 6-3) although some
Risetime receivers select a point at a
0.4 to 1.5 ns fixed time after each transi-
tion point. Any effect which
Unit closes the eye may reduce
Interval the usefulness of the
received signal.
Figure 6-2. Serial signal specifications. In a communications system
with forward error correc-
tion, accurate data recovery
can be made with the eye
nearly closed. With the very
low error rates required for
correct transmission of serial
digital video (see Section 7)
a rather large and clean eye
opening is required after
receiver equalization. This is
because the random nature of
the processes that close the
eye have statistical “tails”
that would cause an occa-
sional, but unacceptable
error. Jitter effects that close
Figure 6-3. Data recovery.

page 25
the eye are discussed in Sec- bandwidth). Monitoring The factor of 0.5 adjusts for
tion 8. quality risetime measure- the fact that the scope rise-
Amplitude is important ments can be made with tele- time specification is for the
because it affects maximum vision test equipment using 10% to 90% points. As an
transmission distance; too equivalent-time sampling at example: with a scope 10 to
large can be a problem as the lower bandwidths. Rise- 90% risetime of 1.0 ns, a
well as the more obvious too time measurements are made measured risetime of 1.2 ns
small. Some receiver equaliz- from the 20% to 80% points would indicate an actual
ers depend on amplitude to as appropriate for ECL logic serial waveform 20 to 80%
estimate cable length and set- devices. Since the serial sig- risetime of 0.97 ns, and a
ting of the equalizer signifi- nal has approximately a 1 ns measured 1.6 ns would indi-
cantly affects resulting noise risetime the measurement cate 1.44 ns actual risetime.
and jitter. must be adjusted per the fol- Measuring Serial Digital Video
lowing formula:
Precise measurement of the Signal Timing
serial transmitter waveform Ta = √ (Tm2 – 0.5 Ts2) Relative timing between
requires a scope with a serial digital video signals
Where:
1 GHz bandwidth because of that are within an opera-
the serial signal's 1 ns rise- Ta = actual risetime tional range for use in studio
time. However, amplitude Tm = measured risetime equipment may vary from
measurements may be made Ts = risetime of the scope several nanoseconds to a few
with lower bandwidth television lines. Measure-
scopes (300 to 500 MHz ment of the timing differ-
ences in operational signal
paths may be accomplished
using the Active Picture Tim-
ing Test Signal available
First full line in an analog field from the TSG 422 Digital
Component Generator in
conjunction with the timing
First and last full amplitude sample cursors and line select of the
allowed by nominal analog blanking WFM 601 series of serial
component waveform
monitors.
Figure 6-4 shows a represen-
First and last digital active picture samples tation of a picture monitor
display of the Active Picture
Timing Test Signal (previ-
ously known as the Digital
Last full line in an analog field Blanking Test Signal). The
first and last full active ana-
log lines have a white (lumi-
nance-only) bar with nomi-
Figure 6-4. Picture monitor display of the Active Picture Timing Test signal.
nal blanking edges. Depend-

page 26
mV mV
ing on the field, these may or
First & last digital sample First & last digital sample may not be the first and last
350 350
Analog line
100% amplitude
Analog line
100% amplitude
full digital active lines. Use
of the specific full-lines
shown below ensure that the
Not to scale Not to scale
complete signal will be visi-
ble after digital-to-analog
0.0 0.0
conversion. It’s the responsi-
µs µs
0.00
000
0.30
004
52.89
714
53.26
719 sample
0.00
000
1.04
014
52.44
708
53.26
719 sample
bility of the converter to
001 009 1429 1439 word 001 029 1417 1439 word make half-lines where appro-
525 Line Luminance 625 Line Luminance priate. The lines with the
mV mV
luminance white bar are:
First & last digital sample First & last digital sample
350 Analog line 350 Analog line
525-line Lines 21, 262,
100% amplitude 100% amplitude signals: 284, and 525
625-line Lines 24, 310,
Not to scale Not to scale signals: 336, and 622
All other active picture lines
0.0 0.0 have a one-sample, half-
µs µs
0.00
000
0.30
002
52.89
357
53.19
359 Cb sample
0.00
000
1.04
007
52.44
354
53.19
359 Cb sample
amplitude word in four loca-
000 008 1428 1436 word (Cb) 000 028 1416 1436 word (Cb) tions: first and last active
000 002 357 359 Cr sample 000 007 354 359 Cr sample
002 010 1430 1438 word (Cr) 002 030 1418 1438 word (Cr)
digital sample, first and last
525 Line Chrominance 625 Line Chrominance sample at the 100% point of
a nominal white bar. Figure
Figure 6-5. Locations of half-amplitude samples. 6-5 shows the specific loca-
tion of each half-amplitude
word. Note: the last active
Digital Signal A chrominance sample on each
T1 DT = 43.22m T2
Line 21 line is co-sited with lumi-
Digital Signal B nance sample #718 whereas
the last luminance sample is
#719.
Analog Reference To make a measurement of
WFM 601, 1-line sweep, Line-select mode large relative timing between
two digital signals, set up the
Digital Signal A WFM 601 as shown in Figure
Line 24 T1 DT = 43.22m T2 6-6. Alternately, select each
input in the line select mode
Digital Signal B
and find the 50% point of
the white bar. The line num-
ber and delta-T measurement
Analog Reference give the total time difference.
WFM 601, 1-line sweep, Line-select mode
For higher resolution mea-
surement of small time dif-
Figure 6-6.Timing measurement, large time difference.
ferences, use the same set up
to view the time of the dou-
ble pulses at the start of the
Digital Signal A active line as shown in Fig-
T1 DT = 1.05m T2 ure 6-7. Although the figure
shows nice clean pulses,
Digital Signal B considerable ringing will be
seen due to the non-nyquist
nature of the single-word
Analog Reference excursion. As with other fre-
WFM 601, 1-line mag sweep quently used setups, these
can be stored as one of the
nine WFM 601 presets, to be
Digital Signal A recalled instantly when
T1 DT = 1.05m T2
needed.
Digital Signal B

Analog Reference
WFM 601, 1-line mag sweep

Figure 6-7.Timing measurement, small time difference.


page 27
page 28
7. Definition and Detection of Errors
In our application of comput- values could be considered Considering the possible
ers and digital techniques to to be correct. Application of replacement of blanking areas
automate many tasks, we’ve this definition to transmis- by some equipment and
grown to expect the hard- sion links is straight forward. knowing that the active pic-
ware and software to report If any digital data word val- ture sample locations are
problems to an operator. This ues change between trans- well defined by the various
is particularly important as mitter and receiver there’s an digital standards, it’s possible
systems become larger, more error. For operational studio to measure Active Picture
complex, and more sophisti- equipment, the situation is a Errors separately from Full
cated. It’s reasonable to little more complicated and Field Errors. The Active Pic-
expect digital television sys- needs further definition. ture Error concept takes care
tems to provide similar fault Equipment such as routing of blanking area replace-
reporting capabilities. switchers, distribution ampli- ments. However, there is a
Television equipment has tra- fiers and patch panels should, more insidious possibility
ditionally had varying levels in general, not change the based on the television
of diagnostic capabilities. data carried by the signal; design engineer’s historical
With the development of dig- hence, the basic definition right to modify the blanking
ital audio and video signals applies. However, when a edges. Most digital standards
it’s now possible to add a routing switcher changes the were designed with digital
vital tool to system fault source selection there will be blanking narrower than ana-
reporting; confirmation of a short disturbance. This log blanking to ensure appro-
signal integrity in studio should not be considered an priate edge transitions in the
interconnection systems. To error although the length of analog domain. (Large ampli-
understand and use this tool, the disturbance is subject to tude edge transitions within
it’s necessary to delve into evaluation and measurement. one sample period caused by
the technology of digital error SMPTE Recommended Prac- time truncating the blanking
detection. The combination tice RP 168 specifies the line waveform can create out-of-
of the serial-digital video in the vertical interval where band spectral components
interconnect method, the switching is to take place, that can show up as excessive
nature of television systems, which allows error measure- ringing after digital-to-analog
and typical digital equipment ment equipment to ignore this conversion and filtering.)
design lead to the use of error acceptable error. What happens in some equip-
measurement methods that ment is that engineers have
There are various types of
are economical yet special- modified the samples repre-
studio equipment that would
ized for this application. senting the analog blanking
not normally be expected to edge in order to provide a
Serial digital video operates change the signal. Examples desired transition; therefore,
in a basically noise-free envi- are frame synchronizers with error measurements through
ronment, so traditional meth- no proc amp controls, pro- such equipment even using
ods of measuring random duction switchers in a the Active Picture concept
error rates are not particu- straight-through mode, and will not work.
larly useful. Examination of digital VTRs in the E-to-E
the overall system character- mode. All have the capability With VTRs, there’s a further
istics leads to the conclusion (and are likely to) replace all limit to measurement of
that a specialized burst error of the horizontal and part of errors. The original full bit
measurement system will the vertical blanking inter- rate VTR formats (D-1, D-2,
provide the television studio vals. In general, replacing and D-3) are designed with
engineer with an effective part of the television signal significant amounts of for-
tool to monitor and evaluate will destroy the error-free ward error correction and
error performance of serial- integrity of the signal. This is work very well. However, it’s
digital video systems. true for both component and the nature of the tape record-
composite signals as there ing and reproduction process
Definition of Errors that some errors will not be
could be ancillary data in the
In the testing of in-studio replaced sections of the sig- corrected. Generally the error
transmission links and oper- nal. There’s an even stronger correction system identifies
ational equipment a single case for composite signals as the uncorrected data and
error is defined as one data the sync areas are not a sophisticated error conceal-
word whose digital value strictly defined set of digits, ment systems can be applied
changes between the signal hence may vary within the to make a virtually perfect
source and the measuring limits of the analog signal picture. The systems are so
receiver. This is significantly standard. good that tens of generations
different than the analog case are possible with no human-
where a range of received noticeable defect. Although

page 29
the error concealment is modification of the data. Quantifying Errors
excellent, it’s almost certain Therefore, all error measure- Most engineers are familiar
that error measurement sys- ment methods external to a with the concept of Bit Error
tems (that by definition digital VTR are not meaning- Rate (BER), which is the ratio
require perfect data repro- ful because of potential of bits in error to total bits. As
duction) would find errors in blanking edge adjustment, an example, the 10-bit digital
many completely acceptable error concealment methods component data rate is
fields. New VTR formats that and, in some equipment, the 270 Mb/s. If there were one
use bit-rate reduction will use of data-rate reduction. error per frame the BER
have an additional potential The good news is that vari- would be 30/(270 x 106) =
source of small but accept- ous types of error rate and 1.11 x 10-7 for 525 line sys-
able data value changes. The concealment rate data are tems or 25/(270 x 106) = 0.93
data compression and available inside the VTR and x 10-7 for 625 line systems.
decompression schemes are standards for reporting that Table 7-1 shows the BER for
not absolutely lossless, information are being one error over different
resulting in some minor developed. lengths of time for various
television systems. BER is a
Table 7-1. Error Frequency and Bit Error Rates useful measure of system per-
formance where the signal-to-
Time Between Errors NTSC PAL Component
143 Mb/s 177 Mb/s 270 Mb/s noise ratio at the receiver is
such that noise-produced
1 television frame 2 x 10–7 2 x 10–7 1 x 10–7 random errors occur.
1 second 7x 10–9 6x 10–9 4 x 10–9 As part of the serial digital
1 minute 1 x 10–10 9 x 10–11 6 x 10–11 interconnect system, scram-
1 hour 2x 10–12 2x 10–12 1 x 10–12 bling is used to lower DC
content of the signal and pro-
1 day 8 x 10–14 7 x 10–14 4 x 10–14
vide sufficient zero crossings
1 week 1x 10–14 9x 10–15 6 x 10–15 for reliable clock recovery.
1 month 3 x 10–15 2 x 10–15 1 x 10–15 It’s the nature of the
1 year 2x 10–16 2x 10–16 1 x 10–16 descrambler that a single bit
error absolutely causes an
1 decade 2 x 10–17 2 x 10–17 1 x 10–17
error in two words (samples)
1 century 2x 10–18 2x 10–18 1 x 10–18 and has a 50-percent proba-
bility of the error in one of
Table 7-2. Error Rate as a Function of SNR the words being in the most,
for Serial Digital NTSC or next to the most, signifi-
cant bit. Therefore, an error
Time Between Errors BER SNR SNR
(dB) (volts ratio) rate of 1 error/frame will be
noticeable by a reasonably
1 microsecond 7 x 10–3 10.8 12 patient observer. If it’s
1 millisecond 7 x 10–6 15.8 38 noticeable, it’s unacceptable;
1 television frame 2x 10–7 17.1 51 but it’s even more unaccept-
able because of what it tells
1 second 7 x 10–9 18.1 64
us about the operation of the
1 minute 1x 10–10 19.0 80 serial transmission system.
1 day 8 x 10–14 20.4 109
Nature of Studio Digital Video
1 month 3 x 10–15 20.9 122 Transmission Systems
1 century 2 x 10–18 21.8 150 Specifications for sources of
digital video signals are
defined by SMPTE 259M.
Although the specifications
Transmitted Signal
do not include a signal-to-
noise ratio (SNR) typical val-
ues would be 40 dB or
greater at the transmitter.
Errors will occur if the SNR
Signal After Equalization at some location in the sys-
tem reaches a low enough
value, generally in the vicin-
Equalizing
ity of 20 dB. Figure 7-1 is a
Serial Coax Cable
Source Amplifier block diagram of the basic
0.8 V 0.03 V 0.8 V serial transmitter and
receiver system. An intuitive
Figure 7-1. Serial transmission system. method of testing the serial
page 30
system is to add cable – a the proposed serial digital described in the proposed
straight-forward method of standard it’s stated that the standard. It’s the 30 dB-of-
lowering the SNR. Since expected operational dis- loss point that’s critical.)
coax itself is not a significant tance is through a length of This same theoretical data
noise source it’s the noise coax that attenuates a fre- can be expressed in a differ-
figure of the receiver that quency of 1/2 the clock rate ent manner to show error
determines the operating by up to 30 dB. That is, re- rates as a function of cable
SNR. Assuming an automatic ceivers may be designed with length as demonstrated in
equalizer in the receiver, less or more capability, but Table 7-3 and shown graphi-
eventually, as more cable is the 30 dB value is considered cally in Figure 7-2. The
added, the signal level due to to be realizable. The data in graph makes it very apparent
coax attenuation causes the Table 7-2 for NTSC serial that there’s a sharp knee in
SNR in the receiver to be digital transmission shows the cable length vs. error rate
such that errors occur. that a 4.7 dB increase in SNR curve. Eighteen additional
Based on the scrambled changes the result from 1 meters of cable (5 percent of
NRZI channel code used and error-per-frame to 1 error- the total) moves operation
assuming gaussian distribut- per-century. For NTSC the from the knee to completely
ed noise, a calculation using calibration point for the cal- unacceptable while 50 fewer
the error-function gives the culation is 400 meters of meters of cable (12 percent of
theoretical values shown in Belden 8281 coax. (Various the total length) moves oper-
Table 7-2. The calibration types of coax can be used ation to a reasonably safe, 1
point for this calculation is provided they have a fre- error/month. Similar results
based on the capabilities of quency response__ reasonably will be obtained for other
the serial-digital interface. In meeting the √ f characteristic standards where the calibra-
tion point for the calculation
is 360 meters for PAL and
Table 7-3. Error Rate as a Function of Cable Length 290 meters for component.
Using 8281 Coax in for Serial Digital NTSC Cable length changes
Time Between Errors BER Cable Length Attenuation (dB) required to maintain head-
(meters) at 1/2 Clock Freq room ‘scales proportionally
as shown in Figure 7-3.
1 microsecond 7 x 10–3 484 36.3
Good engineering practice
1 millisecond 7x 10–6 418 31.3
would suggest a 6-dB margin
1 television frame 2 x 10–7 400 30.0 or 80 meters of cable, hence a
1 second 7x 10–9 387 29.0 maximum operating length
1 minute 1 x 10–10 374 28.1 of about 320 meters in an
NTSC system where the knee
1 day 8x 10–14 356 26.7
of the curve is at 400 meters.
1 month 3 x 10–15 350 26.2 At that operating level, there
1 century 2x 10–18 ≤338 25.3 should never be any errors
(at least not in our lifetime).
Practical systems includes
equipment that doesn’t nec-
essarily completely reconsti-
tute the signal in terms of
SNR. That is, sending the sig-
nal through a distribution
amplifier or routing switcher
may result in a completely
useful but not completely
standard signal to be sent to
a receiving device. The non-
standardness could be both
jitter and noise, but the
sharp-knee characteristic of
the system would remain,
occurring at a different
amount of signal attenuation.
Use of properly equalized
and re-clocked distribution
and routing equipment at
intervals with adequate
headroom provides virtually
Figure 7-2. Calculated NTSC bit-error rate.

page 31
unlimited total transmission the Errored Second. The fol- burst. Errored seconds, and
distances. lowing example demon- its inverse, error free sec-
strates the benefits of the onds, do a good job of quan-
Measuring Bit Error Rates (BER)
errored second. Suppose a tifying this.
BER measurements may be burst error causes 10,000 For use in serial-digital tele-
made directly using equip- errors in two frames of video. vision systems, there are sev-
ment specifically designed A BER measurement made eral disadvantages to direct
for that purpose. Unfortu- for 1 minute would indicate measurement of BER:
nately, in a properly operat- a 1 x 10–6 BER and a mea-
ing system, say with 6 dB of 1. It must be an out-of-ser-
surement made for 1 day
headroom, there’s no BER to vice test because tradi-
would indicate a 8 x 10–9
measure. This is because the tional BER measurements
BER. Whereas an errored sec-
serial digital television sys- use one of several defined
ond measurement could
tem generally operates in an pseudo-random sequences
indicate that there was one
environment that is free from at various bit rates.
second in error at a time 3
random errors. If errors are hours, 10 minutes and 5 sec- 2. None of the sequences are
never going to occur (as onds ago. The errored second particularly similar to the
implied by Table 7-2) with method is clearly a more use- serial-digital video bit
6 dB of headroom, what’s ful measurement in this case. stream; hence, some tele-
there to measure? A more vision equipment will not
A significant advantage of
common problem will be process the test set bit pat-
errored seconds vs. a straight
burst errors due to some sort terns.
BER measurement is that it’s
of interfering signal such as a 3. Consider a system operat-
a better measure of fitness for
noise spike that occurs at in- ing with a reasonable 6 dB
service of links that are sub-
termittent intervals spaced of SNR margin with
ject to burst errors. The serial
far apart in time. Another respect to 1 error/frame.
digital video system fits this
source could be crosstalk Errors due to random
category because television
that might come and go de- noise will occur once
images are greatly disturbed
pending on what other sig- every hundred years or so.
by momentary loss in syn-
nals are being used at a par- A BER measurement will
chronization. A BER mea-
ticular time. Also, there’s the not be possible.
surement could give the
poor electrical connection at
same value for a single, large 4. BER measurements do not
an interface that would cause
burst as it does for several provide meaningful data
noise only when it’s mechan-
shorter scattered bursts. But when the system-under-
ically disturbed.
if several of the shorter test is basically noise free
Because of the intermittent bursts each result in momen- but potentially subject to
nature of burst errors, data tary sync failure, the subjec- burst errors.
recording and communica- tive effect will be more dam-
tions engineers have defined 5. Test sets for BER measure-
age to the viewed picture ment are expensive con-
another error measurement – than caused by the single sidering their limited
application in a television
system.
An Error Measurement Method
for Television
Tektronix has developed an
error detection system for
digital television signals and
has placed the technical
details in the public domain
to encourage other manufac-
turers to use the method.
This method has proven to
be a sensitive and accurate
way to determine if the sys-
tem is operating correctly
and it has been approved for
standardization by SMPTE as
Recommended Practice
RP 165. Briefly, the Error
Detection and Handling
(EDH) concept is based on
making Cyclic Redundancy
Code (CRC) calculations for
Figure 7-3. Calculated 525/625 component bit-error rate. each field of video at the
page 32
serializer as shown in Figure 1. The CRC data is part of be routed to a central col-
7-4. Separate CRCs for the the serial-digital televi- lection point for overall
full field and active picture, sion signal, thereby pro- system diagnostics.
along with status flags, are viding a meaningful mea- Composite digital systems
then sent with the other sure of system perfor- already must have a copro-
serial data through the trans- mance. cessor to handle special tim-
mission system. The CRCs 2. RP 165 can be used as an ing signals required in the
are recalculated at the deseri- in-service test to automat- serial data and not allowed
alizer and, if not identical to ically and electronically in the parallel data. Adding
the transmitted values, an pinpoint any system fail- basic CRC capabilities to the
error is indicated. Typical ures. coprocessor costs close to
error detection data will be nothing. For component sys-
3. For out-of-service testing,
presented as errored seconds tems that do not have the dif-
RP 165 is sufficiently sen-
over a period of time, and ferences between serial and
sitive to accurately define
time since the last errored parallel, there’s a small
the knee of the error rate
second. incremental cost which
curve during stressing
In normal operation of the tests. should be a fraction of a per-
serial-digital interface, there cent of the total cost in
4. Where there are errors
will be no errors to measure. equipment where it’s appro-
present, RP 165 provides
What’s of interest to the tele- priate to use this method.
the information necessary
vision engineer is the
to determine errored sec- System Considerations
amount of headroom that’s
onds, which is more use- In a large serial digital instal-
available in the system. That
ful than bit-error rate. lation the need for traditional
is, how much stressing could
be added to the system 5. Facility is provided for waveform monitoring can be
before the knee of the error measuring both full-field reduced by the systematic
rate curve or crash point is and active-picture errors. application of error detection
reached. As an out-of-service Optional status flags are methods. At signal source
test, this can be determined also available to facilitate locations, such as cameras,
by adding cable or other error reporting. DVEs and VTRs, where oper-
stressing method until the 6. CRC calculation can be ational controls can affect the
onset of errors. Since it’s an built into all serial trans- program signal, it will con-
out-of-service test, either a mitters and receivers for a tinue to be important to ver-
BER test set or RP 165 could very small incremental ify the key program signal
be used. There are, however, cost. With error informa- parameters using waveform
many advantages to using the tion available from a vari- monitors with serial digital
RP 165 system: ety of television equip- input capabilities. The results
ment, the results can then of certain technical opera-
tions, such as embedded
audio mux/demux, serial link
transmission, and routing
switcher I/O, can be moni-
tored with less sophisticated
digital-only equipment pro-
vided the signal data integrity
is verified. It’s the function of
the RP 165 system to provide
that verification.
For equipment where the
digital signal remains in the
serial domain, such as rout-
ing switchers or distribution
amplifiers, it’s not economi-
cal to provide the CRC calcu-
lation function. Therefore, a
basic error detection system
will be implemented as

Figure 7-4. Error detection concept.

page 33
shown in Figure 7-5. Equip- domain processing equip- the monitor’s receiver that’s
ment that processes the sig- ment, consider the block dia- being used to process the sig-
nal in the parallel domain, gram in Figure 7-6. Since the nal, not the actual destina-
such as VTRs, DVEs or pro- signal source doesn’t have an tion equipment. It’s possible
duction switchers, should internal CRC data generator that different receiver charac-
provide the transmit and one might consider a black teristics of the two pieces of
receive CRC calculation nec- box to provide that function. equipment would provide
essary for error detection. Unfortunately, the cost of misleading results. If the
That equipment can then deserializing and reserializ- receiver being tested has an
report errors locally and/or ing makes the cost pro- active loop-through, it’s use-
to a central diagnostics com- hibitively high so such a sys- ful to place the error detect-
puter. Routing switchers and tem is not recommended. At ing monitor at that output.
other equipment operating in a receiver that doesn’t calcu- Errors detected would most
the serial domain will have late the CRC, it’s possible, likely be due to the first
their signal path integrity and not unreasonable, to pro- receiver, that’s the unit being
verified by the error detec- vide a monitor with either tested, eliminating the differ-
tion system. passive or active loop- ence in receiver sensitivities.
To emphasize the impor- through that determines the To extend the idea of system
tance of including the CRC signal integrity. The draw- diagnostics beyond simple
calculation in parallel- back of this system is that it’s digital data error detection, it
would be useful to provide
an equipment fault reporting
system. SMPTE 269M docu-
ments a single contact clo-
sure fault reporting system
and discussions have begun
on computer data communi-
cations protocols for more
sophisticated fault reporting.
Error detection is an impor-
tant part of system diagnos-
tics as shown in Figure 7-7.
Information relating to signal
Figure 7-5. Using error detection (basic). transmission errors are com-
bined with other equipment
internal diagnostics to be
Error Reporting sent to a central computer. A
large routing switcher can
economically support inter-
nal diagnostics. Using two
Signal Processing Signal Routing Rx Signal Processing serial receivers a polling of
and/or Tx Equipment and/or serial-data errors could be
Storage Equipment (serial domain) Storage Equipment implemented. The normal
(parallel domain) (parallel domain) internal bus structure could
be used to send serial data to
a receiver to detect input
Tx = Deserialize, CRC calculation, Reserialize
errors and a special output
Rx = Monitor with active or passive loop-thru, CRC calculation and compare bus could be used to ensure
that no errors were created
Figure 7-6. Using error detection (alternate). within the large serial
domain routing switcher.

Figure 7-7. System fault reporting.

page 34
8. Jitter Effects and Measurements
Digital transmission systems tion of the standard in Febru- that is a multiplex of samples
can operate with a consider- ary 1992, there’s a note to the from two audio channels and
able amount of jitter; in fact, specification which states some ancillary data (see digi-
more jitter than would be tol- “this specification is tenta- tal audio formats in Section
erated in the program signal tive with further work in 3). For television, the pre-
represented by the digits. progress to determine the ferred audio sampling rate is
This section looks at the rea- measurement method.” In 48 kHz, clock-locked to
sons behind this separation fact, both the specification video as required for digital
of jitter effects – the amount and its measurement method VTRs. There are 32 bits of
of jitter that may be found in are the subject of SMPTE en- data associated with each
different digital transmission gineering committee work. audio sample, which pro-
systems and how to measure In parallel component trans- duces a 2-channel (one serial
the jitter in serial transmis- mission, jitter specifications stream) data rate of
sion systems. for the 27 MHz clock signal 3.07 Mb/s. Since the channel
The jitter specification in the are stated as “the peak-to- coding scheme (biphase
standard for the serial-digital peak jitter between rising mark) inserts a transition for
video signal is “the timing of edges shall be within 3 ns of each clock, the resulting
the rising edges of the data the average time of the rising transition rate of the serial
signal shall be within edge computed over at least signal can be 6.14 MHz, giv-
+0.25 ns of the average tim- one field.” For NTSC compos- ing an eye pattern unit inter-
ing of rising edges, as deter- ite, the specification is 5 ns. val of 163 ns. For AES audio,
mined over a period of one the jitter specification is
Digital audio per the AES
line.” As of the first publica- “data transitions shall occur
standard is a serial signal
within +20 ns of an ideal jit-
ter-free clock.”
Jitter In Serial Digital Signals
Jitter, noise, amplitude
changes, and other distor-
tions to the serial-digital sig-
nal can occur as it’s pro-
cessed by distribution ampli-
fiers, routing switchers, and
other equipment that operate
on the signal exclusively in
its serial form. Figure 8-1
shows how the recovered sig-
nal can be as perfect as the
original if the data is
detected with a jitter-free
clock. As long as the noise
and jitter don’t exceed the
Figure 8-1. Data recovery with a noise-free clock. threshold of the detection
circuits (that’s, the eye is suf-
ficiently open) the data will
be perfectly reconstructed.
2 unit-intervals In a practical system, the
clock is extracted from the se-
rial bit stream and contains
some of the jitter present in
Jitter
(Clock Unit Intervals) the signal. Jitter in the clock
This jitter appears This jitter does not appear
in the extracted clock in the extracted clock can be a desirable feature to
the extent that the jitter helps
position the clock edge in the
middle of the eye. Large
amounts of low-frequency jit-
0.25 unit-intervals ter can be tolerated in serial
receivers if the clock follows
Xtal oscillator 10 Hz 10 kHz
Frequency
the eye opening location as its
LC oscillator 250 kHz 2 MHz position varies with time. An
example of receiver jitter sen-
Figure 8-2. Receiver jitter sensitivity.
sitivity is shown in Figure 8-2

page 35
where the solid line repre- tolerance decreases to a value Based on the acceptance of
sents the amount of jitter that of about 0.25 unit intervals. some jitter in the extracted
would cause data errors at the The break points for this toler- clock used to recover the
receiver. For low jitter fre- ance curve depend on the data, two types of jitter are
quencies, eye location varia- type of phase-locked loop cir- defined:
tions of up to several unit cuitry used in clock extrac- 1. Timing Jitter is defined as
intervals will not defeat data tion. the variation in time of
extraction. As the jitter fre- the significant instants
quency increases, the receiver (such as, zero crossings)
of a digital signal relative
to a clock with no jitter
above some low frequency
(about 10 Hz).
2. Alignment Jitter (or rela-
tive jitter) is defined as
the variation in time of
the significant instants
(such as, zero crossings)
of a digital signal relative
to a clock recovered from
the signal itself. (This
clock will have jitter com-
ponents above 10 Hz but
none above a higher fre-
quency in the 1 kHz to
10 kHz range.)
Figure 8-3. Data recovery with extracted clock.
Since the data will generally
be recovered using a clock
with jitter, the resulting digi-
tal information may have jit-
ter on its transition edges as
shown in Figure 8-3. This is
still completely valid infor-
mation since digital signal
processing will only consider
the high/low value in the
middle of the clock period.
However, if the same clock
with jitter (or simple sub-
multiple thereof) is used to
convert the digital informa-
tion to analog, errors may
occur as shown in Figure 8-4.
Sample values converted to
analog at exactly the correct
Figure 8-4. Signal errors due to clock jitter. times produce a straight line
whereas use of a clock with
jitter produces an incorrect
analog waveform. The rela-
tive effect on the analog
waveform produced using the
same clock for digital-to-ana-
log conversion and for data
extraction from the serial sig-
nal depends on the amount of
jitter (in unit intervals) and
the number of quantizing lev-
els in the digitized signal.
Where reduced jitter is
required for the digital-to-
analog converter (DAC) clock,
a circuit such as shown in
Figure 8-5 may be used
Figure 8-5. DAC with a low-jitter clock. where a high Q (crystal)

page 36
phase-locked loop produces a the clock jitter to an accept- well to follow this tradition
clock with much lower jitter. able level. and not produce parallel
Typical jitter specifications The situation for parallel dig- clock jitter with values in the
for serial audio and seri- ital video is similar; how- region of the published spec-
al/parallel video signals are ever, practical implementa- ification. For serial digital
shown in Table 8-1. The tions have generally avoided systems, the engineering
AES/EBU standard for serial the whole issue. That is, community is still consider-
digital audio allows +20 ns most or all parallel digital ing whether low-frequency
of jitter, which is appropriate video clocks have jitter in the jitter greater than the nomi-
as the peak-to-peak value of 1 ns or smaller region, and nal 0.5 ns should be
40 ns is about 1/4 of a unit most or all parallel receivers allowed. That is, should
interval. As explained above, do not allow or account for clocks extracted from all
the DAC clock jitter require- clocks with more than that serial-digital signals be
ments are considerably small amount of jitter. For appropriate as inputs to D/A
tighter. A draft AES/EBU 525/625 video signals, input converters without using jit-
standard specifies the DAC to a 10-bit full-range D/A ter reduction or should D/A
clock at 1 ns jitter. However, converter, the allowable converters be expected to
a theoretical value for 16-bit clock jitter is based on a provide the jitter reduction
audio could be as small as burst frequency, 25% ampli- circuitry.
0.1 ns. The important point tude signal (approximately Measuring Jitter
is that receivers for AES/EBU burst amplitude) causing less There are three oscilloscope-
serial audio should be than one LSB of error. For related methods of measur-
designed to handle up to high-definition signals, a ing jitter in a serial digital
40 ns of jitter, whereas the 20 MHz signal is used. In the signal. Measurement of tim-
internal DAC circuitry of author's opinion, designers of ing jitter requires a jitter-free
such receivers must reduce new equipment would do reference clock as shown in
the top part of Figure 8-6.
Table 8-1. Typical Jitter Specifications Alignment (relative) jitter is
measured using a clock
Standard Clock Jitter % of DAC extracted from the serial sig-
Period Spec Clock Requirement
nal being evaluated as shown
AES/EBU Audio 163 ns 40.0 ns 25% 1.0 ns spec in the bottom part of this fig-
0.1 ns 16-bit ure. Timing jitter measure-
Serial NTSC 7 ns 0.5 ns 7% 0.5 ns ments include essentially all
Serial PAL 6 ns 0.5 ns 9% 0.5 ns frequency components of the
jitter as indicated by the
Serial Component 4 ns 0.5 ns 14% 0.5 ns
dashed line leading into the
Parallel NTSC 70 ns 10.0 ns 15% 0.5 ns solid line in Figure 8-7. The
Parallel PAL 56 ns 10.0 ns 20% 0.5 ns jitter frequency components
Parallel Component 37 ns 6.0 ns 16% 0.5 ns measured using the align-
ment-jitter method will
Parallel HD 7 ns 1.0 ns 14% 0.1 ns
depend on the bandwidth
the clock extraction circuit.
Serial Low-frequency components
Signal V in Oscilloscope Presentation
of jitter will not be included
because the extracted clock
Jitter
Reference follows the serial signal jit-
Clock H trigger
ter. These low-frequency jit-
ter components are not sig-
Timing jitter measurement
nificant for data recovery
provided the measurement
clock extraction system has
the same bandwidth as the
Serial
Signal V in Oscilloscope Presentation
data recovery clock extrac-
tion system. All jitter fre-
Jitter
quencies above a certain
H trigger
value will be measured with
break points between the two
Clock Extraction
areas at frequencies appro-
and Phase Locked Loop priate for the bandwidth of
the clock extraction system
Alignment jitter measurement used. When deriving the
scope trigger it’s important to
Figure 8-6. Measurements using a clock reference.
consider the frequency divi-

page 37
sion that usually takes place scopes, long delays may be filter is much different than
in the clock extractor. If it’s a obtained with extremely that obtained with an
divide-by-ten, then word- small amounts of jitter extracted clock measure-
synchronized jitter will not attributable to the delay cir- ment; hence, the results may
be observed depending on cuits in the scope. At first not be a good indication of
whether the sweep time of glance, this looks like a the ability of a receiver to
the display covers exactly 10 straight forward way to eval- recover the data from the
zero crossings. Division by a uate the eye pattern since a serial bit stream.
number other than the word clock extraction circuit is not As an example, component
length will ensure that all jit- required. The problem is that serial digital video has a unit
ter is measured. the components of jitter fre- interval of 3.7 ns. If the
The third method of observ- quency that are being mea- sweep delay is 37 ns the
ing, but not measuring, jitter sured are a function of the tenth zero crossing will be
is the simple but deceptive sweep delay used and that displayed. In many of today’s
self-triggered scope measure- function is a comb filter. As a serializers there’s a strong jit-
ment depicted in Figure 8-8. result, there are some jitter ter component at one tenth of
By internally triggering the frequencies that will not be the clock frequency (due in
scope on the rising (or measured and others that part to the times 10 multipli-
falling) edge of the waveform will indicate twice as high a er in the serializer). A self-
it’s possible to display an eye value as would be expected. triggered measurement at the
pattern at a delayed time Although there’s a low-pass tenth zero crossing will not
after the trigger point. Using effect with this type of mea- show that jitter. Alternately,
modern digital sampling surement, the shape of the a measurement at other zero
crossings may show as much
as two times too high a value
Total jitter is measured of jitter. To further compli-
using a reference clock
cate the matter, if the one-
Full Value
tenth frequency jitter were
exactly symmetrical (such as,
a sine wave) the fifth zero
Jitter crossing would also have no
(Relative Value) jitter. In practice, the fifth
This jitter is measured
using an extracted clock crossing also shows a lot of
jitter; only the tenth, twenti-
eth, thirtieth, etc., crossings
appear to be nearly jitter free.
In troubleshooting a system,
Zero
the self-triggered method can
Xtal oscillator 10 Hz 10 kHz
be useful in tracking down a
Frequency source of jitter. However,
LC oscillator 250 kHz 2 MHz
proper jitter measurements to
meet system specifications
Figure 8-7. Measured jitter components. should be made with a clock
extraction method. A SMPTE
ad-hoc group is developing
methods to measure and
specify jitter for serial digital
video, most likely incorpo-
rating a defined-clock extrac-
tion system.

Figure 8-8. Self-triggered jitter observations.

page 38
9. System Testing
Stress Testing important in operational test- form. The characteristic of
Unlike analog systems that ing as discussed in Sections the SDI Check Field is that it
tend to degrade gracefully, 6 and 8, but not as stress test- has a maximum amount of
digital systems tend to work ing.) Addition of noise or low-frequency energy in two
without fault until they change in risetime (within separate signals. One signal
crash. This characteristic is reasonable bounds) has little tests equalizer operation and
most clearly illustrated by effect on digital systems and the other tests phase-locked
the discussion of error detec- is not important in stress loop operation. It’s a fully
tion in Section 7. However, tests. valid signal for component
other stressing functions will Cable-length stress testing digital and was originally de-
produce much the same can be done using actual veloped to test D-1 recorders.
result. When operating a dig- coax or a cable simulator. In the composite domain, it’s
ital system, it’s desirable to Coax is the real world and not a valid signal (hence may
know how much headroom most accurate method. The be considered a stress test);
is available; that is, how far key parameter to be mea- however, it’s also a good test
the system is away from the sured is onset of errors to perform. The SDI Check
crash point. To date, there because that defines the Field is defined in proposed
are no in-service tests that crash point as described in SMPTE Recommended Prac-
will measure the headroom; Section 7. With an error mea- tice RP 178.
but research is being pursued surement method in place, Scrambled NRZI. It’s the
in this area. Therefore, out- the quality of the measure- mathematics of the scram-
of-service stress tests are ment will be determined by bling process that produces
required to evaluate system the sharpness of the knee of the pathological signal. Al-
operation. the error curve. As an exam- though the quantizing levels
Stress testing consists of ple, using 8281 coax, a five- 3FF and 000 are excluded
changing one or more param- meter change in length will from the active picture and
eters of the digital signal go from no errors in one ancillary data, the ratio of
until failure occurs. The minute to more than one “1”s to “0”s may be quite
amount of change required to error-per-second. uneven for some values of a
produce a failure is a mea- To evaluate a cable simula- flat color field. This is one of
sure of the headroom. Start- tor, the natural approach is the main reasons for scram-
ing with the specifications in to compare its loss curve bling the signal. Conversion
the serial digital video stan- with coax using a network to NRZI eliminates the polar-
dard (SMPTE 259M), the analyzer. Certainly that’s an ity sensitivity of the signal
most intuitive way to stress appropriate criteria; but the but has little effect on the
the system is to add cable most important is still sharp- ratio of “1”s to “0”s. Scram-
until the onset of errors. ness of the error curve at var- bling does indeed break up
Other tests would be to ious simulated lengths. long runs of “1”s or “0”s and
change amplitude or rise- Experiments have shown produces the desired spec-
time, or add noise and/or jit- that good cable simulators trum with minimum low-fre-
ter to the signal. Each of require a 10- to 15-meter quency content, while pro-
these tests are evaluating one change in added 8281 coax viding maximum zero cross-
or more aspect of the receiver to produce the no-errors to ings needed for clock extrac-
performance, specifically more than one error-per-sec- tion at the receiver. However,
automatic equalizer range ond change. Simulators that there are certain combina-
and accuracy and receiver require a longer change in tions of data input and
noise characteristics. Experi- coax (less sharp knee) are scrambler state that will, oc-
mental results indicate that still useful for comparison casionally, cause long runs
cable-length testing is the testing but should be avoided (20 to 40) of “0”s. These long
most meaningful stress test in equipment evaluation. runs of “0”s create no zero
because it represents real crossings and are the source
SDI Check Field of low-frequency content in
operation. Stress testing
receiver ability to handle The SDI (serial digital inter- the signal. (All “1”s is not a
amplitude changes and face) Check Field (also problem because this pro-
added jitter are useful in known as “pathological sig- duces an NRZI signal at one-
evaluating and accepting nal”) is not a stress test; but half the clock frequency,
equipment, but not too because it’s a full-field test which is right in the middle
meaningful in system opera- signal, it must be an out-of- of the frequency band occu-
tion. (Measuring the signal service test. It’s a difficult pied by the overall signal.)
amplitude at the transmitter signal for the serial digital The scrambler is a nine-cell
and measuring jitter at vari- system to handle and is a shift register as shown in Fig-
ous points in the system is very important test to per- ure 9-1. For each input bit,

page 39
there is one output bit sent to of this analysis the “1”s are with relative ease because of
the one-cell NRZI encoder. high and the “0”s are low as their very short duration.
An output bit is determined opposed to the transition, no- Multiple long run events can
by the state of the 10 cells transition data definition.) be encouraged with certain
and the input bit. A typical The longer runs (16, 19, 22, input signals, which is the
distribution of runs of “1”s 32, 33, 34, and 39) occur as basis for the generation of
and “0”s is shown in Table single events that the trans- pathological signals. When
9-1 for 100 frames of compo- mission system amplifiers the input words alternate
nent black. (For the purpose and receivers can handle between certain digital val-
ues the multi-event patholog-
Table 9-1. 100 Frames of Component Black ical signal will occur for one
Length “1”s “0”s Length “1”s “0”s specific scrambler state, gen-
erally all “0”s, hence the
1 112615438 112610564 21
sequence usually starts at an
2 56303576 56305219 22 73759 13579 SAV. The multi-event
3 28155012 28154963 23 sequence ends at the next
4 14076558 14077338 24
EAV, which breaks the input
sequence. Since the scram-
5 7037923 7038595 25 bler state is more or less a
6 3518756 3518899 26 random number, the multi-
7 1759428 1760240 27 event sequence of long runs
of “0”s happens about once
8 1059392 699666 28
per frame (9-bits, 512 possi-
9 610241 970950 29 ble states, 525 or 625 lines
10 1169 1060 30 per frame).
11 14 156 31 Pathological Signals, the SDI
12 40 32 55 51 Check Field. There are two
forms of the pathological sig-
13 156 114 33 49
nal as shown in Figure 9-2.
14 34 3 For testing the automatic
16 13713 73865 36 equalizer, a run of 19 “0”s
19 101 94 39 50
followed by two “1”s pro-
duces a signal with large DC
content. Remember a “0” is
no transition and a “1” is
represented by a transition in
the NRZI domain. In addi-
tion, the switching on and off
of this high DC content sig-
nal will stress the linearity of
the analog capabilities of the
serial transmission system
and equipment. Poor analog
amplifier linearity results in
errors at the point of transi-
tion where peak signal
Figure 9-1. Serial scrambler and encoder. amplitude is the greatest. It’s
important to produce both
polarities of this signal for
full system testing. Phase-
19 bits 19 bits locked loop testing is accom-
1 bit plished with a signal consist-
ing of 20 NRZI “0”s followed
by a single NRZI “1”. This
Signal for testing automatic cable equalization provides the minimum num-
ber of zero crossings for
clock extraction.
The SDI Check Field consists
20 bits 20 bits of one-half field of each sig-
nal as shown in Figure 9-3.
Equalizer testing is based on
Signal for testing PLL Lock-in the values 300h and 198h

Figure 9-2. Signal forms.

page 40
Table 9-2. 100 Frames of SDI Check Field while phase-locked loop test-
Length “1”s “0”s Length “1”s “0”s ing is based on the values
200h and 110h. In the C-Y
1 112595598 112595271 21
order shown, the top half of
2 56291947 56292583 22 9344 9425 the field will be a purple
3 28146431 28147229 23 here and the bottom half a
4 14073813 14072656 24 shade of gray. Some test sig-
nal generators use the other
5 7035240 7035841 25
order, Y-C, giving two differ-
6 3518502 3518856 26 ent shades of green. Either
7 1758583 1758969 27 one works, but the C-Y order
8 879203 879359 28
is specified in the proposed
recommended practice. One
9 706058 706029 29 word with a single bit of “1”
10 51596 51598 30 is placed in each frame to en-
11 146 154 31 sure both polarities of equal-
izer stress signal for the de-
12 16858 16817 32 49 49
fined SDI Check Field. The
13 34405 34374 33 35 32 single “1” inverts the polar-
14 17445 17442 34 3 4 ity of the NRZ to NRZI func-
16 9558 9588 36 tion because the field (for
component video) would
18 29 27 38
otherwise have an even num-
19 20944 19503 39 13 14 ber of “1”s and the phase
20 19413 19413 40 would never change.
Statistics for 100 frames of
SDI Check Field are shown
in Table 9-2. It’s the runs of
19 and 20 that represent the
low-frequency stressing of
the system. When they hap-
pen (about once per frame)
they occur for a full active
television line and cause a
significant low-frequency
disturbance. Since the PLL
stress signal is a 20 “1”s, 20
“0”s squarewave, you would
expect an even number of
each type of run. The equal-
izer stress signal is based on
runs of 19 “1”s followed by a
“0” or 19 “0”s followed by a
“1”. As described above, an
extra “1” in each frame
forces the two polarities to
happen and both are repre-
sented in the data.
Figure 9-3. SDI check field.

page 41
10. Bibliography
Articles and Books
Ainsworth, Kenneth. “Moni- Fibush, David and Elkind, Mendelson, Philip. Digital
toring the Serial Digital Sig- Bob. “Test and Measurement Magic, Santa Monica, CA.
nal,” Broadcast Engineer- of Serial Digital Television “Building a Serial Compo-
ing, Nov. 1991. Tektronix lit- Systems,” 133rd SMPTE nent Facility,” Broadcast En-
erature number 25W-7156. Technical Conference, Los gineering, Mar. 1992, p. 38,
Ainsworth, Kenneth and Angeles, CA, Oct. 1991. 42, 44, 48, 50.
Andrews, Gary. “Evaluating SMPTE Journal, Sept. 1992, Martin, Bruno. Advanced
Serial Digital Video Sys- p. 622-631. Tektronix litera- Audio Visual Systems, Mon-
tems,” IEEE 4th Interna- ture number 25W-7154. treuil, France. “A Compre-
tional Montreux Sympo- Fibush, David. “Understand- hensive Method of Digital
sium, Montreux, Switzer- ing the Serial Digital Video Video Signal Analysis,”
land, June 1991. Interface,” In View, Midwest 135th SMPTE Technical
Ainsworth, Kenneth and Publishing, Winter/Spring Conference, Los Angeles,
Andrews, Gary. “Compre- 1991, p. 16-18. California, Nov. 1993.
hending the Video Digital Fibush, David. “Error Detec- Reynolds, Keith. Grass Val-
Serial,” Broadcast Engineer- tion in Serial Digital Sys- ley Group, Grass Valley, CA.
ing, Spanish language edi- tems,” NAB, Las Vegas, NV, “The Transition Process: Get-
tion, Sept. 1992, p. 34-44. Apr. 1993. SMPTE Journal, ting from A to D,” Broadcast
Tektronix literature number Aug. 1993, p. 688-692. Engineering, Mar. 1992,
25W-7153. Tektronix literature number p. 86-90.
Avis, Richard, Sony Broad- 25W-7198. Robin, Michael and Poulin,
cast & Pro-Audio Division, Fibush, David. “Jitter Effects Michel. CBC, Montreal,
Basingstoke, U.K. “Serial and Measurements in Serial Canada. “Performance Evalu-
Digital Interface,” Booklet. Digital Television Signals,” ation and Acceptance Test-
Sony Broadcast & Commu- 26th SMPTE Conference, ing of Bit-Serial Digital Video
nications, Basingstoke, Eng- Feb. 1993. SMPTE Journal, Equipment and Systems at
land, June 1991. Aug. 1993, p. 693-698. the CBC,” 134th SMPTE
Elkind, Bob. Ainsworth, Ken- Tektronix literature number Technical Conference,
neth. Fibush, David. Lane, 25W-7179. Toronto, Canada, Nov. 1992.
Richard. Overton, Michael. Fibush, David. “Error Mea- Robin, Michael. CBC, Mon-
“Error Measurements and surements in Studio Digital treal, Canada. “Bit-serial Dig-
Analysis of Serial CCIR-601 Video Systems,” 134th ital Signal Jitter Causes,
Equipment,” International SMPTE Technical Confer- Effects, Remedies and Mea-
Broadcaster's Convention, ence, Toronto, Canada, Nov. surement,” 135th SMPTE
Amsterdam, Holland, June 1992. SMPTE Journal, Aug. Technical Conference, Los
1992. 1993, p. 688-692. Tektronix Angeles, California, Nov.
Elkind, Bob and Fibush, Dav- literature number 25W-7185. 1993.
id. “Proposal for Error Detec- Fibush, David. “Test and Stremler, Ferrel G. “Introduc-
tion and Handling in Studio Measurement of Serial Digi- tion to Communications Sys-
Equipment,” 25th SMPTE tal Signals error detection tems,” Addison-Wesley
Television Conference, De- and jitter,” SBE Convention, Series in Electrical Engi-
troit, MI, Feb. 1991. SMPTE San Jose, CA, Oct. 1992. neering, December 1982.
Journal, Dec. 1991. Grass Valley Group, “Digital Smith, David R. Digital
Tektronix literature number Television: The Transition,” Transmission Systems, Van
25W-7128-1. Grass Valley Group, Inc., Nostrand Reinhold Com-
Eguchi, Takeo. Sony Corpo- Grass Valley, CA. 1992 pany, New York, 1985.
ration, Japan. “Pathological Huckfield, Dave. Sony Stone, David. Pro-Bel Ltd.
Check Codes for Serial Digi- Broadcast & Communications “Digital Signal Analysis,” In-
tal Interface Systems,” 133rd Ltd. “Serial Digital Interfac- ternational Broadcast Engi-
SMPTE Technical Confer- ing,” International Broad- neer, Nov. 1992, p. 28-31.
ence, Los Angeles, CA, Oct. cast Engineer, Sept. 1990.
1991. SMPTE Journal, Aug.
1992, p. 553-558.

page 42
Tancock, M.B., Sony Broad- Ward, Ron. Utah Scientific, Wonsowicz, John. CBC,
cast & Communications, Bas- Salt Lake City, UT. “Avoid- Toronto, Canada. “Design
ingstoke, U.K. “The Digital ing the Pitfalls in Serial Digi- Considerations for Television
Evolution: The Serial Digital tal Signal Distribution,” Facilities in the CBC Toronto
Interface,” Sony, Bas- SMPTE Journal, Jan. 1993, Broadcast Center,” 134th
ingstoke, U.K. Booklet p. 14-23. SMPTE Technical Confer-
released at IBC Convention, Watkinson, John. The Art of ence, Toronto, Canada, Nov.
Brighton, England, Sept. Digital Video, Focal Press, 1992.
1990. London & Boston.
Walker, Marc S. BTS, Salt Watkinson, John and Rum-
Lake City, UT. “Distributing sey, Francis. The Digital In-
Serial Digital Video,” Broad- terface Handbook, Focal
cast Engineering, Feb. 1992, Press, London & Boston.
p. 46-50.

Standards
AES 3 (ANSI S4.40), “AES Report ITU-R BT.624, “Char- SMPTE 267M, “Bit Parallel
Recommended Practice for acteristics of Television Sys- Digital Interface, Component
Digital Audio Engineering, tems” Video Signal 4:2:2, 16x9
Serial Transmission Format Report ITU-R BT.1212, Aspect Ratio”
for Linearly Represented Dig- “Measurements and Test Sig- SMPTE 269M, “Fault Report-
ital Audio Data” nals for Digitally Encoded ing in Television Systems”
AES 11 (Draft ANSI S4.44), Color Television Signals” SMPTE RP 154, “Reference
“AES Recommended Practice EBU Tech 3246, “EBU Paral- Signals for the Synchroniza-
for Digital Audio Engineer- lel Interface for 625-line Digi- tion of 525-line Video Equip-
ing, Synchronization of Digi- tal Video Signals” ment”
tal Audio Equipment in Stu-
EBU N-10, “Parallel Compo- SMPTE RP 168, “Definition
dio Operations”
nent Video Interface for Non- of Vertical Interval Switching
Recommendation ITU-R composite ENG Signals” Point for Synchronous Video
BT.601, “Encoding Parame- Switching”
SMPTE 125M, “Bit-Parallel
ters of Digital Television for
Digital Interface, Component SMPTE RP 165, “Error Detec-
Studios”
Video Signal 4:2:2” tion Checkwords and Status
Recommendation ITU-R Flags for Use in Bit-serial
SMPTE 170M, “Composite
BT.656, “Interfaces for Digi- Digital Television Interfaces”
Analog Video Signal, NTSC
tal Component Video Signals
in 525-line and 625-line for Studio Applications” SMPTE RP 178, “Serial Digi-
SMPTE 244M, “Digital Rep- tal Interface Check Field for
Television Systems Operat-
resentation of NTSC Encoded 10-bit 4:2:2 Component and
ing at the 4:2:2 level of Rec-
Video Signal” 4ƒsc Composite Digital Sig-
ommendation 601”
nals”
Recommendation ITU-R SMPTE 259M, “Serial Digital
Interface for 10-bit 4:2:2 Note: Former CCIR recom-
BT.711, “Synchronizing Ref- mendations and reports are
erence Signals for the Com- Component and 4ƒsc NTSC
now ITU-R documents. The
ponent Digital Studio” Composite Digital Signals” International Telecommuni-
cation Union, Radio Com-
munication Sector has
replaced the CCIR.

page 43
11. Glossary
125M – See SMPTE 125M. bandwidth – 1. The differ- blocking – Occurs in a multi-
4:2:2 – A commonly-used ence between the upper and stage routing system when a
term for a component digital lower limits of a frequency, destination requests a source
video format. The details of often measured in megahertz and finds that source un-
the format are specified in (MHz). 2. The complete available. In a tie line sys-
the CCIR-601 standard docu- range of frequencies over tem, this means that a desti-
ment. The numerals 4:2:2 which a circuit or electronic nation requests a tie line and
denote the ratio of the sam- system can function with receives a “tie line busy”
pling frequencies of the sin- less than a 3 dB signal loss. message, indicating that all
gle luminance channel to the 3. The information carrying tie lines are in use.
two color-difference chan- capability of a particular tele- BNC – Abbreviation of “baby
nels. For every four lumi- vision channel. N connector.” A cable con-
nance samples, there are two baseline shift – A form of nector used extensively in
samples of each color differ- low-frequency distortion television.
ence channel. See CCIR-601. resulting in a shift in the DC byte – A complete set of
4ƒsc – Four times subcarrier level of the signal. quantized levels containing
sampling rate used in com- bit – A binary representation all of the bits. Bytes consist-
posite digital systems. In of 1 or 0. One of the quan- ing of 8 to 10 bits per sample
NTSC, this is 14.3 MHz. In tized levels of a pixel. are typical.
PAL, this is 17.7 MHz. bit parallel – Byte-wise cable equalization – The pro-
AES/EBU – Informal name transmission of digital video cess of altering the frequency
for a digital audio standard down a multi-conductor ca- response of a video amplifier
established jointly by the ble where each pair of wires to compensate for high-fre-
Audio Engineering Society carries a single bit. This stan- quency losses in coaxial
and European Broadcasting dard is covered under cable.
Union organizations. SMPTE 125M, EBU 3267-E CCIR – International Radio
algorithm – A set of rules or and CCIR 656. Consultative Committee, an
processes for solving a prob- bit serial – Bit-wise transmis- international standards com-
lem in a finite number of sion of digital video down a mittee, now replaced by
steps. single conductor such as co- ITU-R.
aliasing – Defects in the pic- axial cable. May also be sent CCIR-601 – (See ITU-R
ture typically caused by through fiber optics. This BT.601.)
insufficient sampling or poor standard is covered under
CCIR-656 – The physical par-
filtering of digital video. De- CCIR 656.
allel and serial interconnect
fects are typically seen as jag- bit slippage – 1. Occurs scheme for CCIR-601. CCIR
gies on diagonal lines and when word framing is lost in 656 defines the parallel con-
twinkling or brightening in a serial signal so the relative nector pinouts as well as the
picture detail. value of a bit is incorrect. blanking, sync, and multi-
analog – An adjective This is generally reset at the plexing schemes used in
describing any signal that next serial signal, TRS-ID for both parallel and serial inter-
varies continuously as op- composite and EAV/SAV for faces. Reflects definitions in
posed to a digital signal that component. 2. The erroneous EBU Tech 3267 (for 625-line
contains discrete levels rep- reading of a serial bit stream signals) and in SMPTE 125M
resenting the binary digits 0 when the recovered clock (parallel 525) and SMPTE
and 1. phase drifts enough to miss a 259M (serial 525).
bit. 3. A phenomenon which
asynchronous – A transmis- channel coding – Describes
occurs in parallel digital data
sion procedure that is not the way in which the 1s and
buses when one or more bits
synchronized by a clock. 0s of the data stream are rep-
gets out of time in relation to
A-to-D Converter (analog-to- resented on the transmission
the rest. The result is errone-
digital) – A circuit that uses path.
ous data. Differing cable
digital sampling to convert lengths is the most common character generator (CG) – A
an analog signal into a digital cause. computer used to generate
representation of that signal. text and sometimes graphics
bit stream – A continuous
for video titles or captions.
series of bits transmitted on a
line. clock jitter – Timing uncer-
tainty of the data cell edges
in a digital signal.

page 44
clock recovery – The recon- compression artifacts – Com- differential phase – A change
struction of timing informa- pacting of a digital signal, in chrominance phase of a
tion from digital data. particularly when a high video signal caused by a
coaxial cable – A transmis- compression ratio is used, change in luminance level of
sion line with a concentric may result in small errors in the signal.
pair of signal carrying con- the decompressed signal. digital word – The number of
ductors. There’s an inner These errors are known as bits treated as a single entity
conductor and an outer con- “artifacts,” or unwanted by the system.
ductive metallic sheath. The defects. The artifacts may re-
discrete – Having an individ-
sheath aids in preventing semble noise (or edge “busy-
ual identity. An individual
external radiation from af- ness”) or may cause parts of
circuit component.
fecting the signal on the the picture, particularly fast
moving portions, to be dis- dither – Typically a random,
inner conductor and mini-
played with the movement low-level signal (oscillation)
mizes signal radiation from
distorted or missing. which may be added to an
the transmission line.
analog signal prior to sam-
coding – Representing each composite digital – A digi-
pling. Often consists of white
level of a video signal as a tally encoded video signal,
noise of one quantizing level
number, usually in binary such as NTSC or PAL video,
peak-to-peak amplitude.
form. that includes horizontal and
vertical synchronizing infor- dither component encoding –
coefficients – A number A slight expansion of the
mation.
(often a constant) that analog signal levels so that
expresses some property of a contouring – Video picture
defect due to quantizing at the signal comes in contact
physical system in a quanti- with more quantizing levels.
tative way. too coarse a level.
The results are smoother
component analog – The D1 – A component digital transitions. This is done by
unencoded output of a cam- video recording format that adding white noise (which is
era, videotape recorder, etc., uses data conforming to the at the amplitude of one quan-
consisting of three primary CCIR-601 standard. Records tizing level) to the analog sig-
color signals: green, blue, on 19mm magnetic tape. nal prior to sampling.
and red (GBR) that together (Often used incorrectly to
drift – Gradual shift or
convey all necessary picture indicate component digital
change in the output over a
information. In some compo- video.)
period of time due to change
nent video formats, these D2 – A composite digital or aging of circuit compo-
three components have been video recording format that nents. Change is often caused
translated into a luminance uses data conforming to by thermal instability of
signal and two color-differ- SMPTE 244M. Records on components.
ence signals, for example, Y, 19mm magnetic tape. (Often
D-to-A converter (digital-to-
B-Y, R-Y. used incorrectly to indicate
analog) – A device that con-
component digital – A digital composite digital video.)
verts digital signals to analog
representation of a compo- D3 – A composite digital signals.
nent analog signal set, most video recording format that
DVTR – Abbreviation of digi-
often Y, B-Y, R-Y. The en- uses data conforming to
tal videotape recorder.
coding parameters are speci- SMPTE 244M. Records on
fied by CCIR 601. The paral- 1/2" magnetic tape. EAV – End of active video in
lel interface is specified by component digital systems.
delay – The time required for
CCIR 656 and SMPTE 125M a signal to pass through a EBU – European Broadcast-
(1991). device or conductor. ing Union. An organization
composite analog – An of European broadcasters
demultiplexer (demux) – A
encoded video signal, such that, among other activities,
device used to separate two
as NTSC or PAL video, that produces technical state-
or more signals that were
includes horizontal and ver- ments and recommendations
previously combined by a
tical synchronizing informa- for the 625/50 line television
compatible multiplexer and
tion. system.
transmitted over a single
channel. EBU TECH.3267-E – The
EBU recommendation for the
deserializer – A device that
parallel interface of 625-line
converts serial digital infor-
mation to parallel. digital video signal. A revi-
sion of the earlier EBU
differential gain – A change Tech.3246-E, which in turn
in chrominance amplitude of was derived from CCIR-601
a video signal caused by a and contributed to CCIR-656
change in luminance level of standards.
the signal.

page 45
EDH (error detection and gain – Any increase or microsecond (µ) – One mil-
handling) – Proposed SMPTE decrease in strength of an lionth of a second: 1 x 10–6 or
RP 165 for recognizing inac- electrical signal. Gain is mea- 0.000001 second.
curacies in the serial digital sured in terms of decibels or Miller squared coding – A
signal. It may be incorpo- number of times of magnifi- DC-free channel coding
rated into serial digital cation. scheme used in D-2 VTRs.
equipment and employ a group delay – A signal defect MPEG-2 – Motion pictures
simple LED error indicator. caused by different frequen- expert group. An interna-
Equalization (EQ) – Process cies having differing propa- tional group of industry ex-
of altering the frequency gation delays (delay at perts set up to standardize
response of a video amplifier 1 MHz is different from delay compressed moving pictures
to compensate for high-fre- at 5 MHz). and audio.
quency losses in coaxial horizontal interval (horizon- multi-layer effects – A
cable. tal blanking interval) – The generic term for a mix/effects
embedded audio – Digital time period between lines of system that allows multiple
audio is multiplexed onto a active video. video images to be combined
serial digital data stream. interpolation – In digital into a composite image.
encoder – In video, a device video, the creation of new multiplexer (mux) – Device
that forms a single, compos- pixels in the image by some for combining two or more
ite color signal from a set of method of mathematically electrical signals into a sin-
component signals. manipulating the values of gle, composite signal.
error concealment – A tech- neighboring pixels.
nanosecond (ns) – One bil-
nique used when error cor- I/O – Abbreviation of lionth of a second: 1 x 10–9 or
rection fails (see error correc- input/output. Typically 0.000000001 second.
tion). Erroneous data is refers to sending information
NICAM (near instantaneous
replaced by data synthesized or data signals to and from
companded audio multiplex)
from surrounding pixels. devices.
– A digital audio coding sys-
error correction – A scheme ITU-R – The International tem originally developed by
that adds overhead to the Telecommunication Union, the BBC for point-to-point
data to permit a certain level Radio Communication Sector links. A later development,
of errors to be detected and (replaces the CCIR). NICAM 728 is used in sev-
corrected. ITU-R BT.601 – An interna- eral European countries to
eye pattern – A waveform tional standard for compo- provide stereo digital audio
used to evaluate channel per- nent digital television from to home television receivers.
formance. which was derived SMPTE nonlinear encoding – Rela-
field-time (linear) distortion – 125M (was RP-125) and EBU tively more levels of quanti-
An unwarranted change in 3246E standards. CCIR zation are assigned to small
video signal amplitude that defines the sampling sys- amplitude signals, relatively
occurs in a time frame of tems, matrix values, and fil- fewer to the large signal
16 ms. ter characteristics for both Y, peaks.
B-Y, R-Y and GBR compo-
format conversion – The pro- nonlinearity – Having gain
nent digital television.
cess of both encoding/decod- vary as a function of signal
ing and resampling of digital jaggies – Slang for the stair- amplitude.
rates. step aliasing that appears on
NRZ – Non return to zero. A
diagonal lines. Caused by in-
frequency modulation – coding scheme that is polar-
sufficient filtering, violation
Modulation of a sinewave or ity sensitive. 0 = logic low;
of the Nyquist Theory,
“carrier” by varying its fre- 1 = logic high.
and/or poor interpolation.
quency in accordance with NRZI – Non return to zero
amplitude variations of the jitter – An undesirable ran-
inverse. A video data scram-
modulating signal. dom signal variation with
bling scheme that is polarity
respect to time.
frequency response rolloff – insensitive. 0 = no change in
A distortion in a transmis- MAC – Multiplexed Analog logic; 1 = a transition from
sion system where the higher Component video. This is a one logic level to the other.
frequency components are means of time multiplexing
not conveyed at their original component analog video
full amplitude and possible down a single transmission
loss of color saturation. channel such as coax, fiber,
or a satellite channel. Usu-
ally involves digital pro-
cesses to achieve the time
compression.

page 46
NTSC (National Television phase error – A picture resolution – The number of
Systems Committee) – Orga- defect caused by the incor- bits (four, eight, ten, etc.)
nization that formulated rect relative timing of a sig- determines the resolution of
standards for the NTSC tele- nal in relation to another the digital signal.
vision system. Now describes signal. 4-bits = a resolution of 1 in
the American system of color phase shift – The movement 16
telecasting which is used in relative timing of a signal 8-bits = a resolution of 1 in
mainly in North America, in relation to another signal. 256
Japan, and parts of South
pixel – The smallest distin- 10-bits = a resolution of 1
America.
guishable and resolvable area in 1024
Nyquist sampling theorem – in a video image. A single
Intervals between successive Eight bits is the minimum
point on the screen. In digital
samples must be equal to or acceptable for broadcast TV.
video, a single sample of the
less than one-half the period picture. Derived from the RP 125 – See SMPTE 125M.
of highest frequency. words picture element. routing switcher – An elec-
orthogonal sampling – Sam- PRBS – Pseudo random tronic device that routes a
pling of a line of repetitive binary sequence. user-supplied signal (audio,
video signal in such a way video, etc.) from any input to
production switcher (vision
that samples in each line are any user-selected output(s).
mixer) – A device that allows
in the same horizontal sampling – Process where
transitions between different
position. analog signals are measured,
video pictures. Also allows
PAL (Phase Alternate Line) – keying and matting often millions of times per
The name of the color televi- (compositing). second for video.
sion system in which the V sampling frequency – The
propagation delay (path
component of burst is number of discrete sample
length) – The time it takes for
inverted in phase from one measurements made in a giv-
a signal to travel through a
line to the next in order to en period of time. Often ex-
circuit, piece of equipment,
minimize hue errors that pressed in megahertz for
or a length of cable.
may occur in color video.
transmission. quantization – The process
of converting a continuous SAV – Start of active video in
parallel cable – A multi-con- component digital systems
analog input into a set of dis-
ductor cable carrying simul-
crete output levels. scope – Short for oscillo-
taneous transmission of data
bits. Analogous to the rows quantizing noise – The noise scope (waveform monitor) or
of a marching band passing a (deviation of a signal from its vectorscope, devices used to
review point. original or correct value) measure the television
which results from the quan- signal.
patch panel – A manual
tization process. In serial dig- scrambling – 1. To transpose
method of routing signals
ital, a granular type of noise or invert digital data accord-
using a panel of receptacles
only present in the presence ing to a prearranged scheme
for sources and destinations
of a signal. in order to break up the low-
and wire jumpers to inter-
connect them. rate conversion – 1. Techni- frequency patterns associated
cally, the process of convert- with serial digital signals.
peak to peak – The ampli- 2. The digital signal is shuf-
ing from one sample rate to
tude (voltage) difference fled to produce a better spec-
another. The digital sample
between the most positive tral distribution.
rate for the component for-
and the most negative excur-
mat is 13.5 MHz; for the serial digital – Digital infor-
sions (peaks) of an electrical
composite format it’s either mation that is transmitted in
signal.
14.3 MHz for NTSC or serial form. Often used infor-
phase distortion – A picture 17.7 MHz for PAL. 2. Often mally to refer to serial digital
defect caused by unequal used incorrectly to indicate television signals.
delay (phase shifting) of dif- both resampling of digital
ferent frequency components serializer – A device that
rates and encoding/decoding. converts parallel digital
within the signal as they pass
Rec. 601 – See CCIR-601. information to serial digital.
through different impedance
elements – filters, amplifiers, reclocking – The process of SMPTE (Society of Motion
ionospheric variations, etc. clocking the data with a Picture and Television Engi-
The defect in the picture is regenerated clock. neers) – A professional orga-
“fringing,” like diffraction nization that recommends
rings, at edges where the standards for the television
contrast changes abruptly. and film industries.

page 47
SMPTE 125M (was RP 125) – sync word – A synchronizing time-multiplex – In the case
The SMPTE recommended bit pattern, differentiated of CCIR-601, a technique for
practice for bit-parallel digi- from the normal data bit pat- transmitting three signals at
tal interface for component terns, used to identify refer- the same time on a group of
video signals. SMPTE 125M ence points in the television parallel wires (parallel
defines the parameters re- signal; also to facilitate word cable).
quired to generate and dis- framing in a serial receiver. TRS – Timing reference sig-
tribute component video sig- telecine – A device for cap- nals in composite digital sys-
nals on a parallel interface. turing movie film as a video tems (four words long).
SMPTE 244M – The SMPTE signal. TRS-ID (timing reference sig-
recommended practice for temporal aliasing – A visual nal identification) – A refer-
bit-parallel digital interface defect that occurs when the ence signal used to maintain
for composite video signals. image being sampled moves timing in composite digital
SMPTE 244M defines the too fast for the sampling rate. systems. It’s four words long.
parameters required to gener- A common example is wagon truncation – Deletion of
ate and distribute composite wheels that appear to rotate lower significant bits on a
video signals on a parallel in- backwards. digital system. Usually
terface.
time base corrector – Device results in digital noise.
SMPTE 259M – The SMPTE used to correct for time base VTR (video tape recorder) –
recommended practice for errors and stabilize the tim- A device which permits
525-line serial digital compo- ing of the video output from audio and video signals to be
nent and composite interfaces. a tape machine. recorded on magnetic tape.
still store – Device for storage TDM (time division multi- waveform – The shape of an
of specific frames of video. plex) – The management of electromagnetic wave. A
synchronous – A transmis- multiple signals on one graphical representation of
sion procedure by which the channel by alternately send- the relationship between
bit and character stream are ing portions of each signal voltage or current and time.
slaved to accurately synchro- and assigning each portion to
word – See byte.
nized clocks, both at the particular blocks of time.
receiving and sending end.

page 48
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From other areas, contact: Tektronix, Inc. Export Sales, P.O. Box 500, M/S 50-255, Beaverton, Oregon 97077-0001, USA (503) 627-1916

Copyright © 1997, Tektronix, Inc. All rights reserved. Tektronix products are covered by U.S. and foreign patents, issued and pending. Information in this
publication supersedes that in all previously published material. Specification and price change privileges reserved. TEKTRONIX and TEK are registered
trademarks of Tektronix, Inc. All other trade names referenced are the service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
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