An HDTV compression scheme for production-quality recording and high-performance shuttle operation

A novel scheme is proposed for the efficient coding and compression of high-definition television (HDTV) sequences for recording on digital video tape. The scheme achieves a constant 8:1 compression ratio by exploiting both intraframe and interframe compression techniques and removing both statistical and psychovisual redundancies during the coding process. However, a perceptually lossless image quality is still maintained after both single and multiple generations. This scheme also allows the recognizable playback of recorded material at speeds up to 50 times normal in both the forward and reverse directions. This high-performance picture-in-shuttle mode of operation is accomplished by employing a hierarchical data structure and exploiting the head-positioning capabilities of conventional digital video tape recorders. The performance of the overall recording scheme is evaluated by simulating the compression and reconstruction of three HDTV test sequences at 1, 10, 20 and 50 times normal layback speed