A Technical Introduction to Digital
Video

Errata to the second and subsequent printings

This note contains errata for the second and subsequent printings of the book A Technical Introduction to Digital Video, by Charles Poynton, published by John Wiley & Sons (1996).

To determine which printing of the book you have, turn to the copyright page of the front matter (page iv) and examine the bottom line. The rightmost digit of that line indicates which printing you have. This note contains errata for the second and subsequent printings. If you have the first printing, obtain the Errata for that printing: Not all of the corrections that you should make are in the present document.

I revise this note as I discover errors, and I tag each entry with the date it was posted. I suggest that when you mark your copy with these corrections, that you annotate the back of the title page of your book with the revision date that you find at the bottom of this page. Then when you check future revisions of this document, you can determine if additional corrections need to be made.

In the entries below, I acknowledge individuals who have contributed corrections. All of the errors dated 1996-12-30 were identified by Chris Pirazzi of SGI. I am very grateful to him, and to Peter W. Rander, who identified several inconsistencies in the HTML conversion.

Copyright © 2002-04-24 Charles Poynton


PDF!A typographic version of this document is available in Acrobat PDF format. The typographic version provides replacement figures.

Chapter 1, Basic principles

2002-04-24: Page 11. In Figure 1.5, Digital video rasters, at the lower right, 1135 1/625 should be replaced by 1135 4/625. Thanks to Maxim Vlassov.

1998-10-16: Page 14. In Figure 1.8, Vertical sync waveform of 525/59.94, the 0V notation should lie under the fourth tick from the left, not the seventh. A replacement figure and caption are provided.

2002-04-24: Page 16. In the second paragraph, third line, 1/625 should be replaced by 4/625. Thanks to Maxim Vlassov.

1999-06-30: Page 19. In Figure 1.11, Frequency response, bandwidth should refer to the frequency where amplitude has fallen to 0.707. A replacement figure and caption are provided.

1999-06-30: Page 20. In the penultimate line of the first paragraph, replace half with 0.707.

1997-09-04: Page 25. To clarify that MPEG-2 subsampling is different from the subsampling used in JPEG, H.261, and MPEG-1, I refined Figure 1.14 and its caption. A replacement figure and caption are provided in the Acrobat PDF version of this document.

1997-09-04: Page 26. To clarify JPEG, MPEG-1, and MPEG-2 subsampling, replace the 4:2:0 paragraph in the middle of page 26 with this:

JPEG, H.261, MPEG-1, and MPEG-2 usually use 4:2:0 sampling. CB and CR are each subsampled by a factor of 2 both horizontally and vertically; CB and CR are sited vertically halfway between scan lines. Horizontal subsampling is inconsistent. In MPEG-2, CB and CR are cosited horizontally. In JPEG, H.261, and MPEG-1, CB and CR are not cosited horizontally; instead, they are sited halfway between alternate luma samples.

Chapter 2, Raster images in computing

1996-12-09: Page 37. In the third paragraph under Truecolor, exchange the italicized word truecolor in the third line with the italicized words direct color in the last line.

Chapter 3, Filtering and sampling

1998-04-28: Page 44. In the first line of the lead paragraph under Sampling theorem, insert the word be between to and digitized..

1998-05-30: Page 52. In Figure 3.7, Fourier transform pairs, the two boxcar functions are improperly scaled: The function should have a value of unity across the range +-0.5 (not +-1).

1999-06-30: Page 57. In the penultimate line of the first paragraph in the section Lowpass filter, replace half with 0.707. On the last line of the page, replace fP by fC.

1999-06-30: Page 58. Figure 3.12, Lowpass filter characterization, bandwidth should refer to the frequency where amplitude has fallen to 0.707. A replacement figure and caption are provided.

Chapter 5, Luminance and lightness

1999-12-28: On page 82, replace the first paragraph with:

Intensity measures the flow of power in a particular, specified direction - intensity is power per unit solid angle. Radiance is intensity per unit area. It is measured with an instrument called a radiometer, and is what I call a linear-light measure, expressed in units such as watts per steradian per square meter (W · sr-1 · m-2).
Also on page 82, in the Luminance section, second paragraph, second line, replace radiant power by radiance.

Chapter 6, Gamma

1999-12-28: On page 91, add this marginal note:

In physics, intensity is defined as radiant power per unit solid angle; it has units of watts per steradian (W · sr-1). Grayscale image data is normally based upon relative luminance, which is intensity per unit area, weighted by the spectral sensitivity of human vision, and normalized to a reference white. This chapter concerns the nonlinear mapping of relative luminance. In this chapter, I use the term intensity to emphasize the linear-light nature of the associated quantity. In the following chapter, I will detail luminance.

1997-12-29: On page 102, on the y-axis ("Video signal") of Figure 6.6, replace 0.099 by 0.081. Thanks to Michael Laird of Avid.

Chapter 7, Color science for video

1999-10-07: On page 119, in the second line of the first paragraph, replace per unit area by in a particular direction. Replace the last two words of the paragraph, square meter, by per steradian. In the second paragraph, replace the word power by intensity (per unit area).

1997-07-01: On page 130, in the third line up from the bottom of the page, replace or by of.

1998-12-22: On page 135, the chromaticity diagram of Figure 7.12 shows the blue primary about 1 cm higher than its true position. A replacement figure is provided.

Chapter 8, Luma and color differences

1998-10-16: At the bottom of page 157, add the four words analog lowpass filters that. Thanks to Peter W. Rander.

1997-11-19: Page 165. The offset terms of Equation 8.2 need to be corrected, by changing 0.0228 to 0.1115, in three places. Thanks to Jan van Rooy of Philips, Breda.

1999-12-28: Page 166. Equation 8.5 was correct when printed, but ITU-R subsequently changed the Rec. 709 luma coefficients in the fourth decimal place. The correct coefficients are now these:

Chapter 9, Component video color coding

1998-04-28: Page 177. In the final line of the page, change the phrase 9-bit multipliers are required to multipliers having more than 8 bits are required. Thanks to Chris Parazzi.

1998-10-16: Page 178. In the second paragraph of the section Kodak PhotoYCC, at the end of the fifth line, change 189 to 182. In Eq. 9.12, change the subscript 189 to 182.

Chapter 10, Composite NTSC and PAL

1996-06-27: Page 186. In the paragraph Subcarrier regeneration, in the fourth line, replace cos by sin.

1996-06-27: Page 187. In the second paragraph, under Quadrature modulation, in the third line of the second paragraph, exchange cos and sin. Equation 10.1 requires a similar change, so as to appear:

1996-06-27: Page 188, 189. Figures 10.3 and 10.4 contain wiring errors. Replacements are provided in the Acrobat PDF version of this document.

Chapter 11, Field, frame, line, and sample rates

1996-08-02: Page 205. In the last paragraph on the page, at the start of the fourth line from the bottom, insert is between This and a hundred. Thanks to Brian Murray.

Chapter 13, 525/59.94 component video

1997-11-13: Page 216. In the second paragraph under Component digital 4:2:2 interface, in the third line, change 732 to 736. In Figure 13.2 on the facing page, change two occurrences of 732 to 736.

1996-12-30: Page 218. In the y-axis legend of Figure 13.3, replace 54 4/7 by 53 4/7, and replace -286 5/7 by -285 5/7.

Chapter 14, 525/59.94 NTSC composite video

1996-06-27: Page 223, Color difference filtering. Delete the second bulleted item. In Equations 14.1 and 14.2, exchange cos and sin:

1996-12-30: Page 227. In the y-axis legend of Figure 14.4, replace 54 4/7 by 53 4/7, and replace -286 5/7 by -285 5/7.

Chapter 15, 625/50 scanning and sync

1997-11-13: Page 230, Table 15.1, 625/50 Line assignment. The terms odd and even are ambiguous when referring to fields in 625/50 scanning. To avoid confusion, I recommend that you use the terms first and second instead. In the heading row, replace Even with Second and Odd with First. In the shaded area at the bottom right of the table, delete two instances of Even and two instances of Odd. On the facing page, delete even and odd from bullet items 1, 5, 6, and 10.

Chapter 16, 625/50 component video

1997-11-13: Page 238. In the second paragraph under Component digital 4:2:2 interface, in the second line, change 736 to 732. In Figure 16.1 on the facing page, change two occurrences of 736 to 732.

Chapter 17, 625/50 PAL composite video

1996-06-27: Page 242. The three paragraphs under the heading Burst should be replaced; in addition, two marginal notes should be added. The Acrobat PDF version of this document provides a complete replacement page.

1996-06-27: Page 243, under Color difference filtering, delete the second item in the bulleted list. In Equation 17.1, exchange cos and sin.

1997-10-15: Page 244. At the end of the penultimate paragraph, delete the phrase with 7.5-percent setup. Thanks to Vince Capizzo.

Chapter 18, Electrical and mechanical interfaces

1997-11-13: Page 248. At the end of the last paragraph on the page, change instead of TRS to in addition to TRS.

Chapter 20, Test signals

1996-04-28: Page 257, Figure 20.1, Colorbars. Replace two instances of WHITE by 100% WHITE. In the narrow horizontal band between vertical coordinates 0.67 and 0.75, in the seventh column (underneath BLUE), change BLUE to 75% WHITE. A replacement figure is provided.

Chapter 21, Timecode

1997-07-11: Page 267. In line 2 of the last paragraph, replace 1.2 Kb/s with 2.4 kb/s. Thanks to Ian Holland.

Glossary

1997-07-01: Page 293. Near the top of the page, in the last line of item 3 of Resolution, limiting, change two cycles in a TV line to two TV lines in a cycle. Thanks to David Farrant.

1998-12-30: Page 295. In the entry for S-video, in the third line, change two only to exactly 2.

Replacement figures and pages

Charles Poynton - A Technical Introduction to Digital Video