Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Charles Poynton
I am an independent contractor specializing in the physics, mathematics,
and engineering of digital color imaging systems, including digital video,
HDTV, and digital cinema (D-cinema). I do technology forecasting,
systems modelling, algorithm development (including digital filter design),
video signal processing architecture, color characterization and calibration,
and image quality assessment. (More...)
tel: +1 416 413 1377
e-mail: concatenate surname at surname dot com (poynton@poynton.com)
[email protocol]
www.poynton.com
What's new?
Courses, seminars
&c.
Color technology
Video engineering
Digital Signal
Processing
Typography and
design
Hire me!
to 2004-12-09. I'm back from London. I'll present a half-day tutorial HDTV
and Digital Cinema Camera Technology at the HPA Tech Retreat in Palm
Springs, on January 25, 2005.
My book Digital Video and HDTV Algorithms and Interfaces is holding
fairly steady between the 10,000-th and 20,000-th most popular book at
Amazon.com. The Table of Contents is available; the Errata were updated
on 2004-10-19. Today, Amazon indicates that DVAI is #1 (the most
popular book purchase) at Texas Instruments; it's #18 in San Jose, Calif.!
My partner Barbara finds all of this quite frightening.
Upcoming (and past) events.
Includes Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs) about Gamma and Color.
Information concerning technical aspects of video.
Where to find digital filter design packages.
Articles I've written concerning typography, information design, and
presentation in the digital world. Also, archaic information is available
concerning making web pages usable, "This site is best experienced";
archaic information concerning the FrameMaker publication system is also
available.
I'm an independent contractor.
Personal stuff
& biographical data
Charles Poynton
Someone once asked Peggy Lee who she thought was the best jazz singer.
Her answer was, "You mean besides Ella?"
Charles Poynton
Copyright 2005-01-13
Momaku
Momaku
Calligraphy by Judth Dowling of the Japanese kanji for retina: Momaku.
Mo, the upper character, means "net". Maku, the lower character, means
"membrane."
This is adapted from the title page of The Retina: an approachable part of
the brain, by John E. Dowling (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1987). Highly recommended!
Mr. Ogawa of Toshiba pointed out to me, via Greg De Priest, that Judith
Dowling's character is in old-style Kanji. I have added the horizontal bar at
the top of the lower-left character, so as to present the modern character.
Charles Poynton
1998-03-19
Analyzing color specification, calibration, capture, processing, storage, and display for digital
cinema, computer animation, computer generated imagery (CGI), and broadcast, industrial,
and consumer video.
For two different manufacturers of emerging displays for digital cinema,
I consulted on color science, helped establish image coding standards, and
assisted in the development, testing, and evaluation of signal processing
algorithms.
I have consulted to several film studios on the establishment of image coding
standards, and helped to introduce color characterization, color calibration, and
color management into their production pipelines.
I have an extensive implementation, in Mathematica, of code for color image
encoding, decoding, matrixing, and processing. You can obtain more
information.
processing at quality levels from digital cinema, through studio broadcast, down to PCs, with
implementation technologies from high-level software, through microcode, to commerciallyavailable VLSI. Generally I perform high-level architectural work, and deliver algorithms as
some combination of textual description, equations, and/or Mathematica code. Sometimes
I provide bit-accurate C-code as well. My clients typically implement these algorithms
themselves in VHDL or Verilog. (I read these languages, but don't [yet] write them.)
For a startup company developing a revolutionary new film scanning
technology, I assisted in color characterization of their highly unusual device,
and in the development of unique image signal processing algorithms.
For a manufacturer of graphics accelerator chips, I designed filtering
algorithms associated with NTSC decoding and encoding, deinterlacing,
reinterlacing, resizing, and frame rate conversion.
For a startup company manufacturing very large scale full-color LED display
systems, I designed the color signal processing architecture including uniformity
correction and color matrixing; great attention was paid to motion artifacts
associated with the interaction between eye tracking and pulse-width modulation
(PWM).
Though this is somewhat old hat, I have an implementation, in Mathematica, of
bit-accurate models of NTSC and PAL encoding and decoding. You can obtain
more information.
Technology assessment and forecasting. I assess the value of intellectual property, to assist
companies to exercise due diligence with respect to licensing or acquisition. I assess how
technological developments in digital video, compression, HDTV, and accurate color
technology are likely to affect companies. Sometimes, this verges into product planning.
For a company that designs and manufactures standard (commercial) integrated
circuits, I consulted on the technological aspects of a business strategy to enter
the domain of consumer electronics.
For a large manufacturer of studio video equipment, I assisted in the evaluation
of the technology of a company that was a candidate for acquisition.
Expert witness in patent litigation. I assess and evaluate patents and patent portfolios, and
occasionally I act as an expert witness in patent litigation.
For a company that designs and manufactures video equipment, I examined the
claims of an inventor that claimed that his patent had been infringed. I gave
a deposition in which I cast doubt on the validity of the claims; this resulted in
an out-of-court settlement.
Writing. I have written several white papers - some attributed, some published anonymously on various topics within my expertise.
For Discreet Logic, a developer of large-scale application software for the
creation of digital media, I wrote a white paper concerning conversion between
R'G'B' (4:4:4) and Y'CBCR (4:2:2) video coding systems. A competitor was
making suspect claims about their own video coding, and implied that Discreet's
R'G'B' system was inferior. Discreet needed an authoritative voice to politely
refute these claims in public.
Teaching courses and seminars. In addition to the many public tutorials, courses, and
seminars that I have presented over the last decade, I have organized and presented many inhouse events for large semiconductor manufacturers, film studios, manufacturers of camera
and display systems, and system and application software companies. Most of my teaching
gigs provide for "open" consulting time for individual contributors and design teams.
Many of the companies that I work for prefer that fact not to be made public. So I cannot tell you
here - or perhaps even at all - who they are.
Sometimes, I charge a per diem rate; sometimes I take fixed-price contracts. Sometimes I perform
contracts without leaving my office in Toronto; sometimes I travel to my clients' facilities. Sometimes
I consult over the telephone, for an hourly rate. If you're interested in having me consult for your
organization, telephone me and we'll discuss your needs, my references, and my rates.
If you're considering hiring me, perhaps you're interested in my medium and long-term goals.
Charles
2005-01-11
You can review past public courses and seminars that I have
presented, in the 1990s, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and
2005.
In addition to open, public courses such as the ones listed
above, I frequently develop and teach on-site courses or
seminars for commercial organizations. I have taught courses
for film and animation studios, workstation and PC
manufacturers, companies that design and manufacture
integrated circuits, and companies that make display systems
and subsystems. I have presented courses on digital video,
color science, color management, and other topics. You can
review the syllabus for the 1-day, 2-day, and 3-day versions of
the Digital Video Technology course.
When I teach a course on digital video, I usually arrange for
each participant to be given a copy of my book, and I also
distribute customized course note handouts. If you're
interested in having me teach at your organization, telephone
me, and we'll discuss your needs, my references, and my rates.
I may also be available for consulting (much as I hate the
word).
Charles Poynton
2005-01-11
communications.
The Table of Contents is available. Errata are available.
Sample chapters will soon be available here.
You can order from the publisher, or Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.
2003-09-25b
Charles Poynton
by Charles Poynton, published by John Wiley & Sons, 1996 (ISBN 0-471-12253-X, hardcover, USD
49.99).
Computers and communication systems have now reached the stage where is it possible to have
photographic-quality color pictures. But smooth motion and accurate color, though easy to achieve in
video equipment, remain beyond the reach of general purpose computers. This book will help
computer system designers, engineers, programmers and technicians to learn the techniques of digital
video, to bring smooth motion and accurate color to computing. If you are a television professional,
this book will help you to understand the technology at the core of digital video.
The book was published in 1996, and reached fifth printing. The superseding edition, Digital Video
and HDTV Algorithms and Interfaces was published in January, 2003, by Morgan Kaufmann.
Because the superseding edition is on the streets, A Technical Introduction to Digital Video will soon
be of print.
If you search on "Poynton," you'll encounter Henry James' book The Spoils of Poynton - that is what
a former boss of mine, Hugh Lawford, used to call my computer programs!
Send e-mail if you have any corrections or suggestions!
Table of Contents
The Table of Contents is available online.
Sample chapters
Two chapters are available online, in typographic-quality Acrobat PDF format:
Errata
Known errors are listed in the Errata. If you discover an error that is not listed, please report it to me
by e-mail.
2003-09-25
Charles Poynton
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of figures
List of tables
Preface
vii
xix
xxv
xxvii
Formulas xxviii
Luma vs Luminance xxviii
CCIR vs ITU-R xxviii
Standards xxix
Layout and typography xxix
Further reading xxx
Basic principles
Imaging 1
Digitization 2
Pixel array 3
Spatiotemporal domains 4
Scanning notation 4
Viewing distance and angle 5
Aspect ratio 6
Frame rate, refresh rate 6
Motion portrayal 8
Raster scanning 8
Interlace 11
Scanning standards 12
Sync structure 13
http://www.poynton.com/notes/TIDV/TIDV_toc.html (1 di 8) [15/01/2005 16:23:21]
Data rate 15
Data rate of digital video 15
Linearity 16
Perceptual uniformity 17
Noise, signal, sensitivity 17
Quantization 18
Frequency response, bandwidth 19
Bandwidth and data rate 20
Resolution 21
Resolution in film 21
Resolution in television 22
Resolution in computer graphics 22
Luma 23
The unfortunate term "video luminance" 24
Color difference coding 24
Component digital video, 4:2:2 26
Composite video 27
Composite digital video, 4fSC 28
Analog interface 28
High-definition television, HDTV 29
2 Raster images in computing
33
Introduction 34
Symbolic image description 34
Raster images 35
Dithering 38
Conversion among types 39
Data compression 40
Image compression 40
Lossy compression 40
3 Filtering and sampling
43
Introduction 43
Sampling theorem 44
Sampling at exactly 0.5fS 45
Frequency response 48
Frequency response of a boxcar 49
Frequency response of point sampling 50
Fourier transform pairs 51
Digital filters 53
Impulse response 54
Finite impulse response (FIR) filters 54
Physical realizability of a filter 55
http://www.poynton.com/notes/TIDV/TIDV_toc.html (2 di 8) [15/01/2005 16:23:21]
67
Comb filtering 68
Frequency spectrum of NTSC 69
Spatial frequency domain 72
Image sampling in computing 76
Image reconstruction 76
Spot size 78
Transition samples 79
Picture center and width 79
5 Luminance and lightness
81
Radiance, intensity 82
Luminance 82
Luminance from red, green, and blue 83
Adaptation 85
Lightness sensitivity 85
Lightness, CIE L* 88
Linear and nonlinear processing 89
6 Gamma
91
Gamma in physics 92
The amazing coincidence! 94
Gamma in film 96
Surround effect 99
Gamma in video 100
Rec. 709 transfer function 102
SMPTE 240M transfer function 103
CRT transfer function details 104
Gamma in computer graphics 107
Gamma in video, computer graphics, SGI, and Macintosh 108
Pseudocolor 110
Halftoning 110
Printing 111
http://www.poynton.com/notes/TIDV/TIDV_toc.html (3 di 8) [15/01/2005 16:23:21]
115
155
Subsampling 168
Luma/color difference summary 168
9 Component video color coding
171
185
199
207
Interlace 207
Line sync 210
Field/frame sync 211
Sync distribution 213
Picture center, aspect ratio, and blanking 213
Halfline blanking 214
13 525/59.94 component video
215
221
Subcarrier 221
Two-frame sequence 222
Burst 222
Color differences, U, V 223
Color difference filtering 223
Chroma, C 223
Setup 224
S-video-525, Y' / C 3.58 225
Composite NTSC encoding 225
Composite digital NTSC interface, 4fSC 226
Composite analog NTSC interface 227
15 625/50 scanning and sync
229
237
220
241
Subcarrier 241
Four-frame sequence 241
Burst 242
Color difference components, U, V 242
Color difference filtering 243
Chroma, C 243
S-video-625, Y'/C 4.43 243
Composite PAL encoding 244
Composite digital PAL interface, 4fSC 244
Composite analog PAL interface 245
18 Electrical and mechanical interfaces
247
251
257
Colorbars 257
Frequency response 258
Differential gain, DG 258
Differential phase, DP 260
Pulse signals 260
Modulated 12.5T, 20T pulses 262
21 Timecode
265
Introduction 265
Dropframe timecode 266
Longitudinal timecode, LTC 267
Vertical interval timecode, VITC 268
Editing 269
Flag bits 270
Further reading 270
Appendix
A Glossary of video signal terms
Index
273
301
1997-06-23
Charles Poynton - A Technical Introduction to Digital Video
Basic principles
This is Chapter 1 of the book
A Technical Introduction to
Digital Video, by Charles
Poynton. Copyright 1996
John Wiley & Sons.
Imaging
The three-dimensional world is imaged by the lens of
the human eye onto the retina, which is populated with
photoreceptor cells that respond to light having wavelengths in the range of about 400 nm to 700 nm. In an
imaging system, we build a camera having a lens and a
photosensitive device, to mimic how the world is
perceived by vision.
Although the shape of the retina is roughly a section of
a sphere, it is topologically two-dimensional. In a
camera, for practical reasons, we employ a flat image
plane, sketched in Figure 1.1 overleaf, instead of a
spherical image surface. Image system theory concerns
analyzing the continuous distribution of power that is
incident on the image plane.
A photographic camera has, in the image plane, film
that is subject to chemical change when irradiated by
2-D sampling
35
64
80
52 280
1
11
20
19
SIF,
82 Kpx
0
24
48
0
60
0
72
Workstation, 1 Mpx
0
90
CHAPTER 1
8
10
BASIC PRINCIPLES
H
O
(T R
R IZ
A O
N N
SV T
ERAL
SE
)
TEMPORAL
VERTICAL
AL
TI
A
SP
Spatiotemporal domains
A digital video image is sampled in the horizontal,
vertical, and temporal axes, as indicated in Figure 1.3
above. One-dimensional sampling theory applies along
each of these axes. At the right is a portion of the twodimensional spatial domain of a single image. Some
spatial processing operations cannot be separated into
horizontal and vertical facets.
Scanning notation
In computing, a display is described by the count of
pixels across the width and height of the image.
Conventional television would be denoted 644 483,
which indicates 483 picture lines. But any display
system involves some scanning overhead, so the total
number of lines in the raster of conventional video is
necessarily greater than 483.
4
625/50/2:1 scanning
1125/60/2:1 scanning
1920 1080
1280 720
BASIC PRINCIPLES
Conventional TV
TV, 640 480
1 480 PH
1 (1 60)
1 PH
7.1 PH
1 PH
Figure 1.4 Viewing
distance and angle.
distance
3400
PH
lines
3.3 PH
Aspect ratio
Variants of conventional
525/59.94 systems having 16:9
aspect ratio have recently been
standardized, but few are
deployed as I write this.
CHAPTER 1
BASIC PRINCIPLES
Motion portrayal
It is conventional in video for each element of an image
sensor device to integrate light from the scene for the
entire frame time. This captures as much of the light
from the scene as possible, in order to maximize sensitivity and/or signal-to-noise ratio. In an interlaced
camera, the exposure time is usually effectively the
duration of the field, not the duration of the frame.
This is necessary in order to achieve good motion
portrayal.
If the image has elements that move an appreciable
distance during the exposure time, then the sampled
image information will exhibit smear. Smear can be
minimized by using an exposure time that is a fraction
of the frame time; however, the method involves
discarding light from the scene and a sensitivity penalty
is incurred.
When the effect of image information incident during a
single frame time persists into succeeding frames, the
sensor exhibits lag. Lag is a practical problem for tubetype cameras, but generally not a problem for CCD
cameras.
Charles Poynton, Motion
portrayal, eye tracking, and
emerging display technology,in Proceedings of the
30th SMPTE Advanced
motion imaging conference,
192202 (White Plains, New
York: SMPTE, 1996).
Raster scanning
In cameras and displays, some time is required to
advance the scanning operation to retrace from one
line to the next and from one picture to the next. These
intervals are called blanking intervals, because in a
8
525/59.94 SCANNING
Square
Pixel
Component 4:2:2
Rec. 601 (D-1)
525
525
(D-2)
525
780
944
640
768
480
625
576
858
864
714
702
480
Composite 4fsc
625/50 SCANNING
625
576
910
1135 4625
757
922
480
NTSC
625
576
PAL
Figure 1.5 Digital video rasters. The left column shows 525/59.94 scanning, the right column shows
625/50. The top row shows sampling with square pixels. The middle row shows sampling at the
Rec. 601 standard sampling frequency of 13.5 MHz. The bottom row shows sampling at four times
the color subcarrier. Blanking intervals are shown with dark shading.
525/59.94 is colloquially
referred to as NTSC, and
625/50 as PAL, but the terms
NTSC and PAL properly apply
to color encoding standards
and not to scanning standards.
CHAPTER 1
BASIC PRINCIPLES
Voltage, mV
700
Code
235
714 S/PW
350
16
300
0H 64
720 S/AL
Sample clocks, at 13.5 MHz
858 S/TL
Figure 1.6 Scan line waveform for 525/59.94 component video, showing luma. The 720 active
samples contain picture information. Horizontal blanking occupies the remaining sample intervals.
10
1
Figure 1.7 Interlaced scanning
forms a complete picture the
2
frame from two fields, each
comprising half the scanning
lines. The second field is
delayed half the frame time
262
from the first.
264
...
...
265
525
263
CHAPTER 1
BASIC PRINCIPLES
11
result. A video camera is designed to avoid introduction of so much vertical detail that flicker could be
produced. In synthetic image generation, vertical detail
may have to be explicitly filtered in order to avoid
flicker.
Scanning standards
Conventional broadcast television scans a picture
whose aspect ratio is 4:3, in left-to-right, top-tobottom order using interlaced scanning.
A scanning system is denoted by its total line count and
its field rate in hertz, separated by a solidus (slash). Two
scanning standards are established for conventional
television: 525/59.94, used primarily in North America
and Japan; and 625/50, used elsewhere. It is obvious
from the scanning nomenclature that the line counts
and frame rates are different. There are other important differences:
System
Picture:Sync ratio
525/59.94 video in Japan
uses 10:4 picture to sync
ratio and zero setup.
Setup, percent
Count of equalization,
broad pulses
Line number 1, and 0V ,
defined at
525/59.94
625/50
10:4
7:3
7.5
First
equalization pulse
First
broad pulse
12
Standards conversion refers to conversion among scanning standards. Standards conversion, done well, is
difficult and expensive. Standards conversion between
scanning systems having different frame rates, even
done poorly, requires a fieldstore or framestore. The
complexity of standards conversion between
525/59.94 scanning and 625/50 scanning is the reason
that it is difficult for consumers and broadcasters to
convert European material for use in North America or
Japan, or vice versa.
Transcoding refers to changing the color encoding of a
signal, without altering its scanning system.
Sync structure
At a video interface, synchronization (sync) is achieved
by associating, with every scan line, a line sync datum
denoted 0H (pronounced zero-H). In component digital
video, sync is conveyed using digital codes 0 and 255
outside the range of picture information. In analog
video, sync is conveyed by voltage levels blacker than
black. 0H is defined by the 50-percent point of the
leading (falling) edge of sync.
CHAPTER 1
BASIC PRINCIPLES
13
PREEQUALIZATION
BROAD PULSES
POSTEQUALIZATION
0 V,525
Figure 1.8 Vertical sync
waveform of 525/59.94.
14
k
K
1000
1024
SI, datacom:
M
106 1 000 000
disk:
M
RAM:
M
CHAPTER 1
BASIC PRINCIPLES
15
f ( a + b) f ( a) + f ( b)
Perceptual uniformity
1
0
0
300
CHAPTER 1
17
10
(k 12 )
18
Figure 1.10
Mid-tread quantizer.
ID
TH
W
D
1.0
0.1
0
0
CHAPTER 1
N
L
RE IM
SO ITI
LU NG
TI
O
HALF-POWER
(-3 dB)
0.707
BA
N
Frequency response,
relative
Output
Input
Figure 1.11 Frequency response of any electronic or optical system falls as frequency increases.
Bandwidth is measured at the half-power point (-3 dB), where response has fallen to 0.707. Television displays are often specified at limiting resolution, where response has fallen to 0.1.
Frequency, relative
BASIC PRINCIPLES
19
Loosely speaking, bandwidth is the rate at which information in a signal can change from one state to
another. The response of an electronic system deteriorates above a certain information rate. Bandwidth is
specified or measured at the frequency where amplitude has fallen 3 dB from its value at zero frequency
(called DC) that is, to the fraction 0.707 of its value
at DC.
The rate at which an analog video signal can change
from one state to another, say from white to black, is
limited by the bandwidth of the video system. This
places an upper bound on horizontal resolution.
Consumer video generally refers to horizontal resolution, measured as the number of black and white
elements (TV lines) that can be discerned over a horizontal distance equal to the picture height.
Bandwidth and data rate
Data rate does not apply directly to an analog system,
and the term bandwidth does not properly apply to a
digital system. When a digital system conveys a
sampled representation of a continuous signal, as in
digital video or digital audio, the bandwidth represented by the digitized signal is necessarily less than
half typically about 0.45 of the sampling rate.
Figure 1.12
Bandwidth and data rate.
20
Resolution
As picture detail increases in frequency, the response of
an imaging system will eventually deteriorate. In image
science and in television, resolution refers to the capability of an imaging system to reproduce fine detail in
the picture.
The absolute upper limit to resolution in a digital image
system is the number of pixels over the width and
height of a frame, and is the way the term resolution is
used in computing.
In conventional North American television, 483 scan
lines cover the height of the image. High-definition
television systems use up to 1080 picture lines. The
amount of information that can be captured in a video
signal is bounded by the number of picture lines. But
other factors impose limits more severe than the
number of lines per picture height.
In an interlaced system, vertical resolution must be
reduced substantially from the scan-line limit, in order
to avoid producing a signal that will exhibit objectionable twitter upon display.
Resolution in film
In film, resolution is measured as the finest pattern of
straight, parallel lines that can be reproduced,
expressed in line pairs per millimeter (lp/mm). A line
pair contains a black region and a white region.
Motion picture film is conveyed vertically through the
camera and projector, so the width not the height
of the film is 35 mm. Cinema usually has an aspect
ratio of 1.85:1, so the projected film area is about
21 mm 11 mm, only three-tenths of the 36 mm
24 mm projected area of 35 mm still film.
The limit to the resolution of motion picture film is not
the static response of the film, but judder and weave in
the camera and the projector.
CHAPTER 1
BASIC PRINCIPLES
21
Resolution in television
In video, resolution refers to the number of line pairs
(cycles) resolved on the face of the display screen,
expressed in cycles per picture height (C/PH) or cycles
per picture width (C/PW). A cycle is equivalent to a
line pair of film. In a digital system, it takes at least two
samples pixels, scanning lines, or TV lines to represent a line pair. However, resolution may be substantially less than the number of pixel pairs due to optical,
electro-optical, and electrical filtering effects. Limiting
resolution is defined as the frequency where detail is
recorded with just 10 percent of the systems lowfrequency response.
In consumer television, the number of scanning lines is
fixed by the raster standard, but the electronics of
transmission, recording, and display systems tend to
limit bandwidth and reduce horizontal resolution.
Consequently, in consumer electronics the term resolution generally refers to horizontal resolution. Confusingly, horizontal resolution is expressed in units of lines
per picture height, so once the number of resolvable
lines is measured, it must be corrected for the aspect
ratio of the picture. Resolution in TV lines per picture
height is twice the resolution in cycles per picture
width, divided by the aspect ratio of the picture.
Resolution in computer graphics
In computer graphics, resolution is simply the number
of discrete vertical and horizontal pixels required to
store the digitized image. For example, a 1152900
system has a total of about one million pixels (one
megapixel, or 1 Mpx). Computer graphics is not generally very concerned about whether individual pixels can
be discerned on the face of the display. In most color
computer systems, an image comprising a one-pixel
black-and-white checkerboard actually displays as a
uniform gray, due to poor high-frequency response in
the cable and video amplifiers, and due to rather large
spot size at the CRT.
22
Pixel
72 dpi
0.35 mm
Spot
0.63 mm
Triad
0.31 mm
Figure 1.13
Pixel/spot/triad.
Computer graphics often treats each pixel as representing an idealized rectangular area independent of all
other pixels. This notion discounts the correlation
among pixels that is an inherent and necessary aspect
of image acquisition, processing, compression, display,
and perception. In fact the rather large spot produced
by the electron beam of a CRT and the arrangement of
phosphor triads on the screen, suggested by
Figure 1.13, produces an image of a pixel on the screen
that bears little resemblance to a rectangle. If pixels are
viewed at a sufficient distance, these artifacts are of
little importance. However, imaging systems are forced
by economic pressures to make maximum perceptual
use of the delivered pixels, consequently we tend to
view CRTs at close viewing distances.
Luma
As you will see in Luma and color differences, on
page 155, a video system conveys image data in the
form of a component that represents brightness, and
two other components that represent color. It is important to convey the brightness component in such a way
that noise (or quantization) introduced in transmission,
processing, and storage has a perceptually similar effect
across the entire tone scale from black to white. Ideally,
these goals would be accomplished by forming a true
CIE luminance signal as a weighted sum of linear-light
red, green, and blue; then subjecting that luminance to
a nonlinear transfer function similar to the CIE L* function that will be described on page 88.
There are practical reasons in video to perform these
operations in the opposite order. First a nonlinear
transfer function gamma correction is applied to
each of the linear R, G, and B. Then a weighted sum of
the nonlinear components is computed to form a luma
signal, Y, representative of brightness.
625/50 standards documents
indicate a precorrection of 1 2.8,
approximately 0.36, but this
value is rarely used in practice.
See Gamma on page 91.
CHAPTER 1
BASIC PRINCIPLES
23
Recommendation ITU-R
BT.601-4, Encoding Parameters
of Digital Television for Studios.
Geneva: ITU, 1990.
Eq 1.2
24
RGB 4:4:4
YCB CR 4:4:4
4:2:2
4:1:1
4:2:0 (JPEG/JFIF,
4:2:0
(Rec. 601)
(DVC)
H.261, MPEG-1)
(MPEG-2)
R0 R1
Y0 Y1
Y0 Y1
Y0 Y1 Y2 Y3
Y0 Y1
Y0 Y1
R2 R3
Y2 Y3
Y2 Y3
Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7
Y2 Y3
Y2 Y3
G0 G1
CB CB
CB01
CB03
G2 G3
CB CB
CB23
CB47
B0 B1
CR CR
CR01
CR03
B2 B3
CR CR
CR23
CR47
CB03
CB03
CR03
CR03
Figure 1.14 Chroma subsampling. A 2 2 array of RGB pixels can be transformed to a luma component Y and two color difference components CB and CR ; color detail can then be reduced by subsampling, provided that full luma detail is maintained. The wide aspect of the CB and CR samples indicates
their spatial extent. The horizontal offset of CB and CR is due to cositing. (JPEG, H.261, and MPEG-1
do not use cositing; instead, their CB and CR samples are taken halfway between luma samples.)
YPBPR
4:4:4
CHAPTER 1
BASIC PRINCIPLES
25
4:2:2
4:1:1
4:2:0
MAC
A transmission system for analog components Multiplexed Analog Components, or MAC has been
adopted in Europe for direct broadcast from satellite
(DBS). In MAC, the color difference components are
not combined with each other or with luma, but are
time-compressed and transmitted serially. MAC is not
standardized by ITU-R.
26
Composite video
The terms NTSC and PAL are
often used incorrectly to refer to
scanning standards. Since PAL
encoding is used with both
625/50 scanning (with two
different subcarrier frequencies)
and 525/59.94 scanning (with a
third subcarrier frequency), the
term PAL alone is ambiguous.
The notation CCIR is sometimes
used to refer to 625/50 scanning, but that is confusing
because the former CCIR now
ITU-R standardized all scanning systems, not just 625/50.
CHAPTER 1
BASIC PRINCIPLES
27
BASIC PRINCIPLES
29
30
CHAPTER 1
BASIC PRINCIPLES
31
Gamma
This is Chapter 6 of the book
A Technical Introduction to
Digital Video, by Charles
Poynton, published in 1996
by John Wiley & Sons.
91
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
Video Signal, mV
Figure 6.1 CRT transfer function involves a nonlinear relationship between video signal and light
intensity, here graphed for an actual CRT at three different settings of the Picture control. Intensity is
approximately proportional to input signal voltage raised to the 2.5 power. The gamma of a display
system or more specifically, a CRT is the numerical value of the exponent of the power function.
CHAPTER 6
GAMMA
93
255
201
200
= 0.5%
101
100
=1%
26
25
= 4%
0
Figure 6.2 Fixed-point
linear-light coding.
CHAPTER 6
GAMMA
95
S. S. Stevens, Psychophysics.
New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1975.
Physical quantity
Power
Loudness
0.67
Saltiness
1.4
Smell
Concentration of aromatic
molecules
0.6
Heaviness
Mass
1.45
Gamma in film
This section describes gamma in photographic film.
I give some background on the photographic process,
then explain why physically accurate reproduction of
luminance values gives subjectively poor results. Video
systems exploit this gem of wisdom from photography:
Subjectively better images can be obtained if proper
account is taken of viewing conditions.
When film is exposed, light imaged from the scene
onto the film causes a chemical change to the emulsion of the film, and forms a latent image. Subsequent
development causes conversion of the latent image into
small grains of metallic silver. This process intrinsically
creates a negative image: Where light causes silver to
be developed, the developed film absorbs light and
appears dark. Color film comprises three layers of emulsion sensitized to different wavelength bands, roughly
red, green, and blue. The development process
converts silver in these three layers into dyes that act as
colored filters to absorb red, green, and blue light.
Film can be characterized by the transfer function that
relates exposure to the transmittance of the developed
film. When film is exposed in a camera, the exposure
value at any point on the film is proportional to the
luminance of the corresponding point in the scene,
multiplied by the exposure time.
96
B
3.2
3.0
G
R
2.8
2.6
2.4
2.2
GB
2.0
Density
EASTMAN Professional
Motion Picture Films,
Kodak Publication H-1,
Fourth Edition. Rochester,
NY: Eastman Kodak
Company, 1992. Figure 26.
3.4
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
BG
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
D min
0.0
-2.0
-1.0
P
D = log10 0
PT
D:
P0 :
Density
Incident Power
PT :
Transmitted Power
Transmittance is defined as the fraction of light incident on the developed film to light absorbed. Density is
the logarithm of incident power divided by transmitted
power. The characteristic of a film is usually shown by
plotting density as a function of the logarithm of exposure. This D-log E curve was first introduced by Hurter
and Driffield, so it is also called an H&D plot. In terms
of the physical quantities of exposure and transmittance, a D-log E plot is fundamentally in the log-log
domain.
A typical film plotted in this way is shown in the plot in
Figure 6.3 above. The plot shows an S-shaped curve
that compresses blacks, compresses whites, and has a
CHAPTER 6
GAMMA
97
98
5.5
Surround effect
CHAPTER 6
GAMMA
99
100
al
gin
Ori e
n
sce
r/
nne
Sca ra
e
cam
on
issi
nsm
Tra m
te
sys
pla
Dis
ced
du
pro
Re e
n
sce
1
2.222
= 0 .4545
2.2
0 .45 2.5 1.13
CHAPTER 6
GAMMA
101
1.0
Power function exponent
0.45
0.8
Video signal
Toe slope
4.5
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.081
0
0.2
0.018
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
well matched to perception. Furthermore, image interchange standards using the 0.45 value are very well
established. The economic importance of equipment
that is already built to these standards will deter any
attempt to establish new standards just because they
are better matched to particular devices. We can expect
new display devices to incorporate local correction, to
adapt between their intrinsic transfer functions and the
transfer function that has been standardized for image
interchange.
Rec. 709 transfer function
Figure 6.6 above illustrates the transfer function
defined by the international Rec. 709 standard for
high-definition television (HDTV). It is basically a
power function with an exponent of 0.45. Theoretically a pure power function suffices for gamma correction; however, the slope of a pure power function is
infinite at zero. In a practical system such as a television camera, in order to minimize noise in the dark
regions of the picture it is necessary to limit the slope
(gain) of the function near black. Rec. 709 specifies a
slope of 4.5 below a tristimulus value of +0.018, and
stretches the remainder of the curve to maintain func102
R 0.018
4.5 R,
R709 =
0.45
1
.
099
0
.
099
,
0
.018 < R
R
Eq 6.2
R 0.0228
4.0 R,
R240 M =
0.45
1
.
1115
0
.
1115
,
0
.0228 < R
R
GAMMA
103
1.0
Intensity, relative
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 mV
54 mV
16
0
700 mV
714 mV
235
255
Figure 6.7 CRT signal levels and intensity. A video signal may be represented as analog voltage, with
zero setup or with 7.5-percent setup. Alternatively, the signal may be represented digitally using
coding from 0 to 255 (for computer graphics), or Rec. 601 coding from 16 to 235 (for studio video).
CHAPTER 6
GAMMA
105
intensity = voltage
intensity = (voltage + )
2.5
106
Eq 6.5
signal = intensity
CHAPTER 6
GAMMA
107
TRANSFER
FUNCTION
FRAMESTORE
(implicit)
Video, PC
INTENSITY
MONITOR
2.5
0.45
RAMP
2.22
Computer
Graphics
(implicit)
FRAMEBUFFER
LOOKUP
TABLE
MONITOR
2.5
INTENSITY
0.45
RAMP
2.22
8-bit Bottleneck
Silicon
Graphics
INTENSITY
LOOKUP
TABLE
FRAMEBUFFER
LOOKUP
TABLE
2.5
1
1.7
1.47
0.68
LOOKUP
TABLE
0.59
FRAMEBUFFER
LOOKUP
TABLE
Macintosh
INTENSITY
MONITOR
MONITOR
2.5
1
1.8
0.56
QuickDraw RGB codes
1.45
0.69
Figure 6.8 Gamma in video, computer graphics, SGI, and Macintosh. In a video system, shown in the
top row, a transfer function in accordance with vision is applied at the camera. The middle row illustrates computer graphics: Calculations are performed in the linear light domain and gamma correction is applied in a lookup table at the output of the framebuffer. Silicon Graphics computers take a
hybrid approach: Part of the correction is accomplished in software, and a 1 1.7 power function is
loaded into the lookup table. The approach used by Macintosh computer sketched in the bottom row.
CHAPTER 6
GAMMA
109
Pseudocolor
In Raster images in computing, on page 1, I described
how pseudocolor systems have lookup tables whose
outputs are directly mapped to voltage at the display. It
is conventional for a pseudocolor application program
to provide, to a graphics system, RGB color values that
are already gamma-corrected for a typical monitor. A
pseudocolor image stored in a file is accompanied by a
colormap whose RGB values incorporate gamma
correction. If these values are loaded into a 24-bit
framebuffer whose lookup table is arranged to gammacorrect intensity values, the pseudocolor values will be
gamma-corrected a second time, resulting in poor
image quality.
If you want to recover intensity from gamma-corrected
RGB values, for example to back-out the gamma
correction that is implicit in the RGB colormap values
associated with an 8-bit colormapped image, construct
an inverse-gamma table. You can employ a lookup
technique as above, building an inverse table
INTEN_FROM_SIG using code similar to the
SIG_FROM_INTEN code on page 107, but with an
exponent of 1 0.45 instead of 0.45. Be aware that the
perceptual uniformity of the gamma-corrected image
will be compromised by mapping into the 8-bit intensity domain: Contouring which I will discuss on page
page 113 will be introduced into the darker shades.
Halftoning
Figure 6.9
110
Printing
An image destined for halftone printing conventionally
specifies each pixel as dot percentage in film. An imagesetters halftoning machinery generates dots whose
areas are proportional to the requested coverage. In
principle, dot percentage in film is inversely proportional to linear-light reflectance.
CHAPTER 6
GAMMA
111
1.0
Reflectance
0.8
Calc. Reflectance
1.75
0.025+ 100-C
102
0.6
Typ. Reflectance
Dot gain
0.4
Dot Gain
0.2
0.0
100
80
60
40
20
112
CHAPTER 6
GAMMA
113
114
Errata
This page gives you access to the errata for the book A Technical Introduction to Digital Video, by
Charles Poynton, published by John Wiley & Sons (1996). I provide the Errata in typographic-quality
Acrobat PDF format, including replacement figures, and in HTML format (viewable directly in your
web browser). You can access information about formats.
The book is in its fourth printing. 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. The second, third, fourth, and fifth printings are identical.
Printing
Updated
Acrobat PDF,
Typeset quality
HTML
PostScript - .ps
These files can be printed with a PostScript printer and viewed on most UNIX platforms. To learn
more about PostScript, read Allen Braunsdorf's PostScript FAQ. Most of the PostScript files here have
no embedded fonts and require only Times, Helvetica, Palatino and Symbol from the core 35
("LaserWriter Plus") set of fonts that are built-in to almost all PostScript laser printers. The PostScript
files use generic PPDs and are laid out with generous margins for US Letter size paper. I confess I
don't know how well they print to A4.
If you are running Windows, UNIX or VMS, you can view PostScript using GhostScript
or GhostView. You can obtain GhostScript from ftp.cs.wisc.edu.
You can view and print PostScript on a Macintosh using Mac GhostView. Version 5.5 is
available. See my archaic page Viewing PostScript on a Macintosh.
prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/
gatekeeper.dec.com:/pub/GNU/
ftp.uu.net:/systems/gnu/
Gnu zip replaces the traditional UNIX compress program. The major advantage of Gzip over
compress (.Z) is that it has no patent infringement strings attached - UNISYS claims a patent on the
LZW compression algorithm upon which compress is based.
If you use a Macintosh, Aladdin's latest StuffIt Expander (freeware) will decode these files. It is
available at all the usual Mac repositories. You can download the freeware StuffIt Expander 5.5 from
Aladdin's ftp site (MacBinary format, 824704 bytes) or the AOL mirror (MacBinary format, 824704
bytes). Aladdin's DropStuff with Expander Expander 5.5 (shareware, $30) adds to StuffIt Expander
additional decoding capabilities such as gnu zip. Obtain it from Aladdin's ftp site (MacBinary format,
2049920 bytes) or the AOL mirror (MacBinary format, 2049920 bytes).
Charles
1999-08-12
This page outlines shareware and freeware methods to view and print PostScript on a Mac. See also
Macintouch's PostScript RIP alternatives.
6.0.1
You can view and print PostScript on a Mac using Thomas Kiffe's MacGhostView, version 2.1. This
port is essentially a stand-alone subset of CMacTEX 3.6, based on GhostScript version 6.0.1; visit
Thomas' MacGhostView page. These files unpack into approximately 8 MB:
5.5
Mac GS is port of GhostScript version 5.5 to the Mac, ported by Jeff Schindall in conjunction with
Aladdin Enterprises.
You can consult Aladdin's ghostscript page.
You can consult the manual:
macgsmanual.html (HTML format, 24085 bytes)
Then, you can download the installer:
macgs-550-installer.bin (MacBinary format, 4660864 bytes)
1.0
Mark Lentczner of Glyphic Technology ported GhostScript 3.33 to the Mac; this was released as Mac
GS Viewer 1.0. Glyphic no longer supports this version; it is obsolete.
0.x
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Prior to the release of Mac GhostView, I wrote a document that explains how to view and print
PostScript on a Macintosh using Adobe's commercial Acrobat Distiller. The note contains an
introduction to PostScript, information about Printing PostScript on a Mac, a section concerning
Viewing and printing PostScript on a Mac, and an introduction to Encapsulated PostScript (EPS). The
document is now somewhat dated.
Charles - Mac
2001-05-09
Charles A. Poynton
56A Lawrence Avenue E
Toronto, ON M4N 1S3
CANADA
tel +1 416 486 3271
fax +1 416 486 3657
poynton@inforamp.net
Introduction to PostScript
PostScript is a programming language specialized to produce images with type and drawn
elements. It is possible to encode a continuous-tone image into a PostScript file, but TIFF is better
suited to that purpose. A PostScript file is independent of the resolution of the output device: the
interpreter in a particular device produces an image appropriate for that device.
A PostScript file generally contains only characters from the 96-character ASCII set, and accommodates any line-end convention (UNIX, MS-DOS and Mac) so it is relatively easy to move PostScript
files through networks and across e-mail links.
Since PostScript includes a complete programming language, it is generally not possible to convert a
PostScript file into some other format either an object-oriented format like PICT or WMF, or a
bitmapped format like GIF or TIFF without using a full PostScript language interpreter. A few
restricted, specialized dialects of PostScript such as the Adobe Illustrator file format [4] can be
translated without a full interpreter.
PostScript was invented by Adobe Systems, Inc. The specification of the PostScript language [1] and
the PostScript font format [2] have been made public by Adobe, and several PostScript clones are
commercially available. However, the name PostScript is a trademark that belongs to Adobe, and
the copyright to the PostScript Language Reference Manual is the property of Adobe.
A large effort within a community computer programmers has resulted in a free interpreter called
GhostScript. That group takes as their motto, Implementation is the sincerest form of flattery.
2
Most models of the Apple LaserWriter series or printers have built-in PostScript interpreters. A
Macintosh computer that is attached to a PostScript-equipped LaserWriter, either directly or
through an AppleTalk network, can print PostScript files.
A Macintosh ordinarily generates PostScript on the fly, often from QuickDraw. To print a pre
existing PostScript file you need a program that bypasses the Macs printer driver and downloads
the PostScript file to the printer. You can use Apples LaserWriter Utility, part of Apples system
software. Adobe distributes a comparable program called Downloader. You can also use Rich
Siegels popular and well-respected freeware program DropPS.
The Mac itself has no native capability to interpret a PostScript program and produce an image. If
you have a printer without PostScript capability and but you have access to PostScript files from
the Internet, for example you will have to go to a certain amount of trouble to print the images.
You will also have to go to some trouble to view the images without printing them.
1995/01/13 Charles A. Poynton. All rights reserved.
1 of 3
Most UNIX workstation vendors have licenced the Display PostScript System (DPS) from Adobe.
Workstations from those vendors can display PostScript directly.
3
The GhostScript system and its viewer GhostView work well MS-DOS, Windows, UNIX and OS/2
systems. A version of GhostScript is available for the Macintosh and In theory GhostScript can be
used to view and print PostScript files on a Mac. However, GhostScript for the Macintosh is difficult
to install, difficult to use, and not very robust. It fails on many PostScript files. I cannot recommend
it. A new port is promised soon, so its worth watching GhostScript developments.
I use a highly reliable method that uses commercial Adobe software. My method has two passes.
First, I use the Adobe Acrobat Distiller application to interpret the PostScript code and generate a
Portable Document Format (PDF) file. Then I use Adobes Acrobat Reader to view the resulting
PDF. The method is highly reliable. Both the Distiller and the Reader are commercial-grade software. The Acrobat system has the capability to substitute fonts that were used in the original document but are not available at the viewing Mac. This is accomplished through a limited edition of
SuperATM, which is included in the Reader distribution. Acrobat Reader can also be used to print,
either to a PostScript printer or to a non-PostScript (QuickDraw) printer.
Although the Acrobat Reader is freely available from Adobe, Acrobat Distiller is commercial software. It is available as a self-contained product, and is a component of certain versions of Adobe
Acrobat Pro. The Distiller is bundled with Adobe Illustrator version 5.5; that is how I obtained mine.
For the moment, Adobe is the sole source of PDF technology. Adobe has published the specifications of the PDF file format [3], so we can anticipate PDF becoming available from other vendors.
4
This section concerns a dialect of PostScript called Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), which is used
extensively in graphic and desktop publishing applications. EPS is standardized by Adobe [5].
A PostScript file may produce no image at all, an image on one page or images on many pages.
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) is a dialect of PostScript where a single EPS file produces exactly one
image. In addition to being restricted to one image, an EPS file contains information about the
extent of the image on the page the bounding box of the image. This information is included at
the head of the EPS file as PostScript comments that are ignored by a PostScript interpreter but are
recognized by applications and system software. The comments conform to document structuring
conventions (DSC) [6]. Also, the PostScript program in an EPS file has certain restrictions.
Although an EPS file contains all of the PostScript instructions to draw a page, it does not necessarily end with the showpage operator that is required by a printer to print the page. Also, the
image that is drawn may be outside the imaging area of a particular printer. An Apple LaserWriter
cannot print closer than 1 4 inch to the edge of a page, but a very small EPS image might fit entirely
in the non-printable margin. In fact it is common for an EPS image to have its origin at PostScript
coordinates (0, 0), at the extreme corner of the page, which is cropped on a regular LaserWriter. So
an EPS file might print properly when send to a PostScript printer, but it might not. The safest way
to print an EPS file is to import it into an EPS-capable application, then print from that application.
An EPS file may optionally include, within the file, a bitmapped preview image. There are no fewer
than four versions of EPS preview images: PICT, Windows Metafile (WMF), TIFF and ASCII. The
fourth variant is denoted EPSI (EPS interchange). A particular application might recognize one,
two, three or four of these formats. Counting the case of no preview, there are five variants.
V I E W I NG PO S T S CR IP T O N A M A CIN T OSH
Within each variant, the preview may be black and white (one bit) or color (eight-bit). The standard
allows full-color (32-bit) preview images, but applications rarely implement this option.
All EPS-capable applications on a Macintosh recognize the PICT variant, where the preview image is
stored as a PICT resource (ID=256) within the EPS file. Resources are a unique feature of the Mac
file system, and the PICT format is Macintosh-specific. Transferring a Mac EPSF file with a PICT
preview to another platform results in the loss of the preview image. Although the importing application will display the file as a grey rectangle, the EPS will print correctly.
The WMF variant of EPSF is ubiquitous In MS-DOS and Windows systems; the TIFF variant is less
common. In both of these formats the preview image is coded in binary form as part of the file. In
both cases the binary content must be stripped out before transfer to a Macintosh or to a PostScript
interpreter.
In the EPSI format, the preview image is encoded into PostScript comments at the head of the data
portion of the file. This format has a preview, contains no Mac resource and is free of non-PostScript binary data. You would expect the EPSI format to provides a preview image that is usable on
every platform. Regrettably, very few applications and virtually no Mac applications recognize
the EPSI variant. Although Adobe invented the EPSI format, even popular and well-respected
Adobe applications such as Photoshop and Illustrator do not implement EPSI! So in practice EPSI is
nearly useless. The notable exception is FrameMaker, where the EPSI format is implemented on
UNIX, Mac and Windows.
To summarize, printing EPS files takes special measures, and it is very difficult to transport EPS from
one platform to another.
5
References
[1] PostScript language reference manual, Second Edition (The Big Red Book). Adobe Systems
Incorporated, 1990. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. ISBN 0-201-18127-4.
[2] Adobe type 1 font format (The Black Book). Adobe Systems Incorporated, 1990. AddisonWesley, Reading, MA. ISBN 0-201-57044-0.
[3] Portable Document Format Reference Manual. Adobe Systems Incorporated, 1993. AddisonWesley, Reading, MA. ISBN 0-201-62628-4.
[4] Adobe Illustrator File Format Specification, Version 3.0 (Draft, 28 October 1992), Adobe
Technical Note LPS5007, available as <ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/DeveloperSupport/
TechNotes/5007AI_Spec_v3.0_Draft.pdf>.
[5] Encapsulated PostScript File Format Specification, Version 3.0 (1 May 1992), Adobe Technical
Note LPS5002, available as <ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/DeveloperSupport/TechNotes/
5002.EPSF_Spec_v3.0.pdf>, also published as Appendix H in PostScript language reference
manual, Second Edition, [1] above.
[6] Document Structuring Conventions Version 3.0, Adobe Technical Note LPS5002, available as <ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/DeveloperSupport/TechNotes/
5001.DSC_Spec_v3.0.ps>, also published as Appendix G in PostScript language reference
manual, Second Edition, [1] above.
Introduction to RIPping
Raster Image Processing, or RIPping, refers to the conversion of a PostScript file to a high-resolution
bitmap, a necessary process in typographic-quality printing. RIPping is performed by the PostScript
interpreter that resides in a laser printer or filmsetter. You can access several brief documents that
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introduce you to RIPping, in order to get a document from a Macintosh to a commercial printer.
I recommend that you make inactivate every TrueType fonts that is named after a city, except for
Chicago, Monaco, and Geneva. Inactivate a font by simply moving it out of the Fonts folder.
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The Chicago, Monaco, and Geneva TrueType fonts are used by system software. I advise you to leave
these installed, in TrueType form. However, I also advise you not to use them in any document! They
are optimized for the screen.
New York is a cheap imitation of Times; Geneva is a cheap imitation of Helvetica. Upon printing to a
PostScript printer, Monaco, Geneva, and New York are normally substituted by Courier, Helvetica,
and Times respectively. If you really want Courier, Helvetica, or Times in a document, make sure you
specify it explicitly: do not rely upon the font substitution feature to to obtain one of these. In fact,
I recommend that you access the PostScript options of Page Setup, and disable Substitute Fonts. This
setting is stored on a per-document basis.
Once you have made any non-city-named TrueType fonts inactive, confirm that for every Type 1
outline font, you have installed the matching screen font, and it is from the same vendor as the Type 1
font. If you Get Info for an Adobe font, the file information dialog includes Adobe's copyright
information.
More detail is available in the document Apple v. Adobe Metrics.
You might also be interested in PostScript vs. TrueType Fonts: Which should you use? by Judy Litt.
There is an archaic option in some older Microsoft products: fractional spacing. Very early Macintosh
applications restricted spacing of characters to the same pitch as pixels on the screen, 1/72 inch. For
some unaccountable reason, Microsoft chose to perpetuate this behaviour into their applications, long
after the LaserWriter was commonplace, and long after the Mac system software allowed essentially
infinite resolution of character positions. To achieve good spacing in these Microsoft products, you
must enable Fractional Spacing (that is, fractions of 1/72 inch) in the Page Setup dialog.
Charles - Mac, Frame, Introduction to RIPping
1998-05-29
If you use Frame - or any high-end DTP product - on a Mac, let me suggest that you rip out your
TrueType fonts !
Apple's TrueType fonts have metrics - in particular, character widths - that have different values from
the metrics of Adobe fonts of the same name. If you have TrueType fonts installed in your system, as
is the default upon installing system 7, your applications will use the TrueType metrics, and send to
the printer jobs that have character spacing determined by TrueType metrics. If your printer has an
Adobe font whose name matches characters spaced using the TrueType metrics, then the printer will
use the Adobe type 1 font and its metrics, and your spacing will screw up.
The results vary application-by-application, depending on the character quanta (characters, words or
lines) by which the app delivers its PostScript output. The problem can manifest itself as justification
errors, underlines not aligning with their words and text being cropped by its (supposed) bounding
boxes.
The solution is this: for any Adobe font resident in your printer, rip the corresponding TrueType font
out of your system and make sure Adobe's screen (bitmapped) font is installed. Also, make sure you
always un-check Font Substitution, in order to avoid Geneva TrueType being sent to the printer with
its name remapped to Helvetica, invoking the metrics mismatch problem. If you have old, old, old
applications, when printing to a LaserWriter you should always check Fractional Widths, otherwise
your characters will be placed on a rather coarse 1/72-inch grid.
The spacing problem can appear whether or not Adobe Type Manager (ATM) is running. If you are
running ATM then you will want Adobe's outline (printer) fonts as well as the bitmaps. Of course the
presence of a TrueType font in the system file - or in the Fonts folder of System 7.1 and subsequent will render inaccessible the correspondingly-named Adobe type 1 font.
The fundamental causes of this problem is that Apple have not yet learned what "open systems"
means. Apple likes to invent different things, all their own, different from what others before them
have done even if the function is identical. That is why:
I like Apple a lot, but it is increasingly difficult to continue being a fan while they keep jerking us
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Introduction to RIPping
Introduction to RIPping
Raster Image Processing, or RIPping, refers to the conversion of a PostScript file to a high-resolution
bitmap, a necessary process in typographic-quality printing. In high-end printing, RIPping is
performed by the PostScript interpreter that resides in a laser printer or filmsetter.
Here you can access four brief documents that introduce you to RIPping, in order to get a document
from a Macintosh to a commercial printer:
Rip out your TrueType fonts!
Submitting raw PostScript to a print shop
Preparing to RIP
Preparing to RIP on a DocuTech
Submitting PostScript files to a commercial printer
DocuTechs I've known
You might also want to take a look at Demystifying Service Bureaus, Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part
IV, all by Judy Litt.
I wrote this document in later 1997. Since then, Acrobat PDF has become the format of choice for
submitting jobs to a commercial printer. However, perhaps surprisingly, they're slow to innovate: You
may find that your printer is not confident in handling PDF. If so, hand off PostScript, created as I
described above, or find a printer that is familiar with PDF.
Charles - Mac
2000-03-31
If you want to have files printed by a commercial printer, it is a good idea to submit raw PostScript
files instead of application (Quark, PageMaker, or FrameMaker) files.
Print shops have a dilemma with accepting raw PostScript: If a PostScript job prints, it is virtually
guaranteed that it will print in exact conformance with the user's expectations when the file was
created. But if the user makes a mistake in the creation of the file that causes a PostScript error upon
interpretation - if the user forgets to include a font, say - it is next to impossible for the print shop to
repair the error in the PostScript file!
The incidence of PostScript errors can be minimized by the print shop if it has access to the customer's
application files. However, submission of application files to the print shop has the problem that a
whole set of files must be submitted: You must submit not only your Quark or PageMaker document,
but also all of its referenced graphics files. Submitting an application file also requires that the print
shop is licensed for, and has installed, that application! Virtually all print shops have Quark and
PageMaker, but they do not have some of the more specialized applications such as FrameMaker.
High-end print shops are generally happy to accept raw PostScript if you are willing to provide it,
because it alleviates them of the need to deal with PostScript errors. But they might be hesitant if they
consider you to be inexperienced with PostScript: They don't want to waste RIP time on failed
PostScript jobs, and they don't want to waste technicians' time explaining things to you. The solution
is to deliver your first PostScript job error-free!
Unfortunately, many imagesetters produce poor error messages, or none at all. Here is an actual error
message that I received upon running a DocuTech job at Kinko's:
Try debugging from THAT! Not even a page number is provided! If you take care in preparing your
job, you can prevent nightmares like this.
Adobe is moving rapidly to establish Acrobat PDF as the format of choice for electronic submission
of print jobs. PDF has the advantage of being very robust concerning fonts, and enables use of just
one file for each complete job. The Acrobat Reader is freely and widely available. However, not all
print shops are familiar with Acrobat, and there are one or two potential kinks in the process.
You might be interested in the companion document Preparing to RIP.
Charles - Introduction to RIPping
1998-01-18
Preparing to RIP
Preparing to RIP
This note explains how to use a Macintosh to prepare PostScript files for RIPping on a DocuTech, a
filmsetter, or other high-performance PostScript output devices. (You can interpolate from this
document to figure out how to accomplish the same task using a Windows machine, but be aware that
Windows operating system generated notoriously poor PostScript code. Be sure to use Adobe's printer
drivers, not those provided by Microsoft.)
First, obtain the PostScript Printer Description (PPD) file for the intended device. The print shop that
owns the device may be able to provide you with this file. Alternatively, you can access Adobe's
archive of PPD files, or access the web site of the manufacturer of the device. You will have to know
the model number of the device. Place the PPD file into the Printer Descriptions subfolder of
Extensions of your System Folder.
Use the Chooser to select a LaserWriter version 8 driver. I use either Apple's LaserWriter driver,
version 8.5.1, or Adobe's "AdobePS" driver, version 8.5.1. (If you're interested in saving to PDF, or in
virtual printers, consult this note at MacFixIt. If you wish to install both the Adobe and Apple drivers,
install the Apple driver last, or read this note at MacFixIt.) [Apple LaserWriter 8.6 is now available,
as a component of Mac OS 8.5.]
If you are using the desktop printing feature, choose a PostScript printer, access Printing -> Change
Setup ..., and select the appropriate PPD. If you are not using desktop printing, you must have a
PostScript printer online: Open the Chooser, select a PostScript printer, choose Setup ..., then select
the appropriate PPD.
From you application, choose Page Setup and ensure that the printing settings - particularly the page
size settings - are appropriate for your job. If you are using a sophisticated application - Illustrator,
FrameMaker, PageMaker, or Quark XPress, page size is specified in two places: in the Page Setup
dialog, and also in the document itself, through a different dialog that depends upon the particular
application. Double-check this: If you get it wrong, then your job is liable to be printed with the
incorrect cropping or positioning.
I recommend that you disable (deselect) all of the Image & Text PostScript Options - Substitute Fonts,
Smooth Text, Smooth Graphics, Precision Bitmap Alignment, and Unlimited Downloadable Fonts.
When your document is ready, choose Print. Access Print to File, to create a PostScript job file.
(Encapsulated PostScript, EPS, is inappropriate for ripping.) Chose to include All fonts not in PPD.
Many imagesetters, including some early DocuTechs, are PostScript level 1 devices: Choose level 2
or level 3 only if you are quite certain that the device offers the corresponding capability. You can use
either ASCII or binary format; binary leads to more compact files, but can be more difficult to
transport through e-mail. Choose double-sided printing; ensure that you choose the correct binding
edge. Use an extension of ".ps". It will be convenient for your printer if you use a base name that is
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Preparing to RIP
your last name, or the name of your company. (The filename handout.ps may be unambiguous to you,
but you can imagine that a large printer may receive twenty files daily having this name! On the other
hand, the printer is likely to receive at most one file daily having the name Poynton.ps.)
For any document that you are reproducing in quantity larger than five or ten pieces, you should give
your document a title, a date, and an attribution. (Failure to provide a clear title and author
identification of a document is one of the Ten common mistakes in the typesetting of technical
documents.) If you're going to the trouble to print your document well, then I recommend that you
give your document a title page. If the document comprises more than about 40 pages, arrange with
your printer to bind the document with Wire-O or plastic spiral binding, with your cover page on the
front printed on card stock material, and a blank piece of card stock material as a back cover. Provide
your cover in its own PostScript file, separate from your main document.
In addition to the PostScript job file, I generally provide an Acrobat PDF file to be used in case of
PostScript failures. Not all commercial printing shops are familiar with PDF at the moment, though
Adobe is moving rapidly to establish PDF as the format of choice for electronic submission of print
jobs. You might find that the print shop is happier with Acrobat PDF than with PostScript. Take care,
though, that any critical fonts are embedded in your PDF - otherwise, they will be synthesized at the
printers, and may not appear quite as you want.
Detail specific to the Xerox DocuTech is contained in the companion document, Preparing to RIP on
a DocuTech.
Submit the file according to the companion document, Submitting PostScript files to a commercial
printer.
Charles - Introduction to RIPping
1998-12-13
You are reading the HTML version of this document. Typographic-quality versions of this
document are available in Acrobat PDF format (62129 bytes). You can access information
about formats.
Inside these parentheses ( ) should be a single space character. Should you see gobbledigook instead
of a single space, some parts of this document will be garbled. Please contact the developers of your
web browser and explain to them that they should properly implement the non-breaking space code
that is standardized in ISO 8859-1 and HTML-2.0.
It is obviously necessary to distinguish headings (or heads) from body text. Normally, a head is placed
in the margin, or set off by spacing. In these circumstances, it is unnecessary to set the head in a size
larger than the body type, and usually unnecessary to use a different font family. If you are unfamiliar
with typesetting, simply set the head in boldface type of the same size as the body face.
4. Mistaken application of typewriter conventions
Follow the period at the end of a sentence by a single space, not two. Use a single paragraph mark to
terminate a paragraph, not two. To achieve spacing, or to force a paragraph to the top of a page, use
your word processor's spacing and positioning controls instead of blank lines. It is wrong to set two
hyphens in place of a dash: Use an en dash surrounded by normal (word) spaces. Modern word
processors and page layout programs allow you to use typographic characters. Use the straight single
and double quotes ' and " only to denote minutes, seconds, feet, and inches; and then only if there is
insufficient space to spell out the unit. For all other purposes, use typographer's ("curly") quotes.
5. Failure to use italics for emphasis
Underlining is strictly for typewriters. Modern word processors and page layout programs give access
to italic typefaces: Use italics for emphasis. To use boldface would make your page look blotchy. Use
quotation marks only for their intended purpose: quotations. To use quotation marks for emphasis is
disruptive to smooth reading of your text.
6. Failure to control line breaks
Modern word processors and page layout programs allow you to control line breaks and hyphenation.
Use a nonbreaking space to prevent adjacent elements - such as a numerical quantity and its
associated unit - from being separated by a line or page break. Use a nonbreaking hyphen to avoid the
elements of a compound modifier, such as 35-millimeter, from being broken.
7. Failure to clearly identify paragraphs
A surprising number of technical articles fail to make a clear demarcation between paragraphs. This
does a great disservice to the reader. You must choose one of two alternatives to identify paragraphs:
Either indent the first line of every paragraph, leaving all lines on the page with the same spacing, or
use no indentation at all and place a blank line between paragraphs.
8. Careless setting of fractions
Set a fraction using superscript for the numerator and subscript for the denominator. Use the fraction
slash character as a separator - on a Macintosh, access it as Shift-Option-1.
9. Errors in orientation of figures
If your document includes figures oriented differently from the text, it will be necessary for the reader
to rotate your document. You must ensure that he or she has to turn the document only once per page,
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and always in the same direction. Arrange the layout so that the reader rotates the body text clockwise
90 degrees to view a figure. In other words, when viewing the text in its natural orientation, place the
top of a rotated figure to the left.
10. Failure to provide clear title and author
A surprising number of technical authors fail to clearly identify their work. If you want your reader to
be certain who wrote the work, to cite it, and to determine whether he or she has the most recent
version, you must take care to provide complete information on the first page.
Copyright 1998-02-08
Charles Poynton
Charles Poynton
tel +1 416 413 1377
fax +1 416 413 1378
poynton @ poynton.com
www.poynton.com
Failure clearly identify title and author: A surprising number of technical authors fail to clearly identify their work. If you want your reader
to be certain who wrote the work, to be able to cite it, and to determine whether he or she has the most recent version, you must take
care to provide title, author, and version or date on the first page.
1 of 2
double quotes ' and " only to denote minutes, seconds, feet, and
inches; and then only if there is insufficient space to spell out the unit.
For all other purposes, use typographers (curly) quotes. (Unfortunately, HTML has no typographical quotes.)
5
Lack of consideration for line length and type size: A 66 character line
is widely regarded as ideal for readability. With 12-point Courier type
so-called Pica, with ten characters per inch 66 characters make
a 6.6-inch line. Set on an 8.5-inch page width, this leaves a reasonable
margin of about an inch on each side. But 12-point type, especially
Courier, is too large for all but very unusual cases. With 10-point
Palatino, quite suitable for a technical document, a typical 6.6-inch line
has 100 characters, far too many for continuous reading. To use
10-point Palatino, a line length of about 4 1 8 inches would be ideal. If
you want to use a single column, consider using 11-point type in
a column about 5 inches wide. If your document is almost wholly text,
consider using 9-point type in a layout with two 3-inch columns.
Failure to clearly distinguish paragraphs: A surprising number of technical articles fail to make a clear demarcation between paragraphs. This
does a great disservice to the reader. You must choose one of two alternatives to identify paragraphs. If you set all lines on the page tightly
spaced, then indent the first line of every paragraph. Alternatively, place
a blank line between paragraphs and use no indentation.
This note explains how to prepare PostScript files on a Macintosh, for printing on a Xerox DocuTech
135.
"DocuTech" refers to a series of high performance laser printers made by Xerox - whoops, The
Document Company. A DocuTech model 135 with the PostScript option is essentially a high-speed
PostScript laser printer and a high-speed duplicator - or loosely, Xerox machine - melded into a 3,193
lb unit. It prints 135 pages per minute.
If you want to have files printed on a DocuTech, it is a good idea to submit raw PostScript files
instead of application (Quark, PageMaker, or FrameMaker) files. To learn why, see the companion
document Submitting raw PostScript to a print shop.
You'll need the PostScript Printer Description (PPD) file for the DocuTech 6135. Obtain it from
Xerox: xrd61353.ppd (text format, 37045 bytes)
Create a PostScript job file according to the companion document Preparing to RIP.
The DocuTech is a Postcript level 2 printer. Use a file extension of ".ps". It will be convenient for
your priner if you use a base name that is your last name, or the name of your company: I imagine that
a typical DocuTech shop gets three or four files daily that have the same name, handout.ps!
If your document will have a cover, submit that as a separate one-page job. Some shops have a
separate per-file RIPping charge, of perhaps $10 or $15. The extra file will incur an extra RIP charge,
but asking the DocuTech operator to separate the pages into separate jobs is inviting error.
In addition to the PostScript job file, I generally provide an Acrobat PDF file to be used in case of
PostScript failures. Not all DocuTech shops are familiar with PDF at the moment, though Adobe is
moving rapidly to establish PDF as the format of choice for electronic submission of print jobs.
Submit the file according to the companion document, Submitting PostScript files to a commercial
printer.
You will find that the DocuTech images screens considerably lighter than a typical laser printer - in
particular, screens lighter than about 5% will disappear. The nasty solution is to make sure that and
graphic files are adjusted appropriately! A more complicated solution that involves setting PostScript
transfer functions is beyond the scope of this note.
Charles - Introduction to RIPping
1998-12-13
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As far as I am concerned, Xerox is an eminently suitable name for a company. The name is easily
recognizable, well-respected, and (presumably) free from cross-cultural problems.
However, the corporate strategy experts at Xerox thought that it wasn't good enough, so in about
1994, with the advice of Landor Associates, they changed the name to The Document Company
Xerox. (Or perhaps they just recommended adding a tag line.) In French, the line is Les Gens de
Documents - literally, the gentlemen of documents.
Web pages at the Xerox site explain that a videotape is actually just another form of document. Here's
the quote, from What is the document?
The hard copy manuscript of a Mozart Symphony sitting in a Salzburg Museum is a
document. A CD of the Vienna Philharmonic playing that symphony is an audio
document with the added information of the conductors [sic] interpretation. A video of
the performance is yet another document.
I don't agree. Xerox seems to be arguing for device-independent multimedia, across a pretty wide
range (sheet music, digital audio, video). As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as good
multimedia. Any good presentation is necessarily optimized for the presentation medium.
Charles - Preparing to RIP on a DocuTech
1999-01-20
If you're going to the trouble to print on DocuTech, instead of printing on a laser printer (and perhaps
photocopying), I recommend that you choose a paper that is more opaque than typical commodity
laserwriter paper. At some shops, ask for "60 pound paper." It doesn't have to be "bond," and in many
cases it won't be anywhere near two and a half times heavier than what they call "24 pound" paper,
but it will prevent your reading through the page to the reverse side.
The preferred physical media for most print shops is a Mac-formatted 100 megabyte Zip cartridge.
Most printing shops also accept 44 MB and 88 MB SyQuest cartridges; some accept Jaz carts.
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If you do not have a Zip (or SyQuest or Jaz) drive, you will have to use a floppy disk, and transfer the
file across the net. Alternatively, you could transfer the file to the printing shop by e-mai, or by
modem transfer to a BBS. Call them and ask about their facilities.
Some very small shops prefer files to be supplied on PC-formatted floppy disk; if the DocuTech is not
networked, then this is your only option. In this case, give the file a name in accordance with MSDOS ("8.3") file name conventions. If necessary, use the zip compression scheme to compress the file,
and give the file an extension of ".zip". Zip compression is available through several shareware and
freeware programs on the Mac. You might try zipit, version 1.3.8 (BinHex format, 623284 bytes).
If you are transmitting the job electronically to a shop that uses Macs, you'll probably want to use
StuffIt compression and give the file an extension of ".sit". Transmit the file in binary mode (or, if
available, MacBinary mode).
You might be interested in reviewing some tips from a commercial shop on perparing files:
Submitting Electronic Mechanicals - a wonderful oxymoron!
Charles - Introduction to RIPping
1998-08-06
This note explains how to find a Xerox DocuTech 135 to print your job. (I assume you're familiar
with my Introduction to RIPping.)
I often use DocuTechs when I'm on the road, away from Toronto. Usually, I use Kinko's. I have used
Kinko's locations in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, New York, ..., well, you get the drift.
But I have to say that the service is intermittent, at best. I've frequently found the network down, the
network up but the spooler down, the machine tied up for the next 4 days, etc. Call first, and confirm
that they've got a DocuTech, that it's available, and that everything is working. I know this sounds
pedantic. Trust me. The great thing about DocuTech is that if you prepare the job correctly, and you
jump through all of the hoops to get to the machine, and if it prints at all, then it prints perfectly.
Although Kinko's DocuTech service is generally unreliable but usable, this Palo Alto location is
superb, and the La Jolla (San Diego) and Austin locations are very good:
Kinko's
249 California Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94306
U.S.A.
tel: +1 650 328 3381
fax: +1 650 328 7518
Kinko's La Jolla (For Canadians: "laah HOY-ah")
8849 Villa La Jolla Drive
La Jolla, CA 94306
U.S.A.
tel: +1 619 457 3775
fax: +1 619 457 0946
Kinko's
9222 Burnett Road, #101
Austin, TX 78758
U.S.A.
tel: +1 512 339 1191
fax: +1 512 339 1625
Aside from these gems, service at Kinko's is spotty. (Who knows, personnel might have changed at
those locations.) In any event Kinko's charges an arm and a leg. Try to find a local, independent shop,
if you can. I think you'll find that service and price will be better by far. Search the Yellow Pages!
Search on the Internet!
Introduction to RIPping
Raster Image Processing, or RIPping, refers to the conversion of a PostScript file to a high-resolution
bitmap, a necessary process in typographic-quality printing. RIPping is performed by the PostScript
interpreter that resides in a laser printer or filmsetter.
Here you can access four brief documents that introduce you to RIPping, in order to get a document
from a Macintosh to a commercial printer. Information about printing from FrameMaker to a Xerox
DocuTech is included.
Short Subjects
I rummaged around the attic and came up with a handful of short articles that I have written on
diverse subjects. All are in ASCII text format; most are less than 10 KB. Most are copies or direct
adaptations of Usenet news postings.
Charles A. Poynton
56A Lawrence Avenue E
Toronto, ON M4N 1S3
CANADA
tel +1 416 486 3271
fax +1 416 486 3657
poynton@inforamp.net
This note explains how to use FrameMaker to make Portable Document Format (PDF) files suitable
for Adobes Acrobat Reader. The note concentrates on how to produce bookmarks.This note is
written for Frame 4.0.4 on a Mac, although Windows and UNIX are the same in principle. I assume
that you have access to Adobes Acrobat Distiller.
This document lives at
<ftp://inforamp.net/pub/users/poynton/doc/Frame/Frame_Acro_Bookmarks.pdf>
1
Acrobat Overview
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format invented by Adobe for the electronic distribution
of documents. A PDF document is not PostScript, but sort of its second cousin. You can think of it
as embodying the imaging operations of PostScript without the programming language. A document in PDF form has the same potential print quality as a PostScript file, but it can be viewed or
printed without involving the full complexity of a PostScript interpreter. A PDF file contains only the
7-bit ASCII printable character set, and accommodates any line-end convention, so PDF is freely
transportable across MS-DOS, Windows, Macintosh and UNIX platforms.
Font handling in the Acrobat system is quite sophisticated. If a PDF file references fonts that are not
present during reading, Acrobat Reader uses ATM and MultiMaster technology to synthesize, onthe fly, a font that has the same metrics and roughly the same look.
The PDF file format is documented in Portable Document Format Reference Manual, Adobe
Systems Incorporated (Addison-Wesley, 1993, ISBN 0-201-62628-4).
Adobe distributes free Acrobat Readers in MS-DOS, Windows, Mac and Sun UNIX versions. Find
these at <ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/Applications/Acrobat/>.
2
Generating PDF
To generate a PDF file, you use either Adobe PDFWriter or Adobe Distiller.
PDFWriter is a component of a commercial software package from Adobe called Acrobat Exchange.
PDFWriter takes the place of a print driver, and writes a PDF file to disk. PDFWriter offers no PostScript capability to the application. In the Mac environment, it operates as a QuickDraw printer.
Although this is quite satisfactory for many uses, EPS files that are incorporated into a document
will have their preview bitmaps written to the PDF file.
Acrobat Distiller, a commercial software package available from Adobe, incorporates a PostScript
Level 2 interpreter. It can take any PostScript file, including embedded EPS drawings or pictures,
and generate PDF. Adobe Illustrator version 5.5 for the Mac comes with a copy of Distiller.
1995/01/06 Charles A. Poynton. All rights reserved.
1 of 4
MA K I N G A C R OB A T B OOK MA R K S U S I N G F R A ME M AKER
Bookmarks
Bookmarks are a feature of PDF files that make it easy for a reader to navigate through a document. You can think of a bookmark as being an executable element of a table of contents.
Unless special measures are taken, a PDF file produced by either PDFWriter or Distiller has no bookmarks. Bookmarks can be added to a PDF file using Adobes Acrobat Exchange product, but it is a
big nuisance to generate bookmarks manually. The remainder of this note explains how bookmarks
can be generated more or less automatically by Frame.
4
Distiller operators
Adobes Distiller implements a PostScript operator pdfmark which inserts a bookmark into a generated PDF file. This operator is documented in Adobes Tech Note LPS 0172, pdfmark Reference
Manual. You will use Frames Generate/Update facility to extract bookmarks information from your
document, and generate a file of lines with the pdfmark operator.
You will make a small batch file that issues the Distillers RunFile operator to pull your bookmark
file, then your documents PostScript file, from disk and present them to the interpreter in turn.
RunFile is documented in Adobes Tech Note 4402, Using the RunFile Procedure to Combine PostScript Files.
5
You could generate bookmarks from paragraphs having a certain tag, for example Heading1 for
first-level headings. However the reader of your document may have a restricted amount of screen
area that she wants to devote to bookmarks when she is using the Acrobat Reader, and your document may have longish section headings. Also, Acrobats bookmarks allow no special character
formatting, but your document may have headings that include character formatting. I recommend
that you generate the bookmarks from markers having short versions of the text of the section
headings, instead of the from the section headings themselves. I use Marker Type 11.
Go through your document adding markers of type 11, with the text that you wish to be collected
into bookmarks. If you add a section later, remember to add a marker. If you want to include a
parenthesis or a backslash in bookmark text, you must escape it with backslash: to get (A), use
\(A\). Use only characters in the ASCII set, because bookmark characters in the upper 128 are
apparently not preserved across platforms.
Make sure that your System Variables and Cross-References are up-to-date. I find it frustrating that
Frame does not invite me to update these before I Print or Generate, but its better than Quark or
PageMaker which have no cross-reference capability at all!
Print your document to a PostScript file.
Frame inserts into its PostScript code an advertisement that appears only when the PostScript is
processed by the Distiller. Use a text editor to search the PostScript for a line containing the word
created, like the line below. Then delete the line.
187 776 M (This document was created with FrameMaker 4.0.4) FmPT
Compiling the bookmarks involves generating a file, containing PostScript code, from the markers
that you have inserted in your document. While your document is open, you will choose Generate
from Frames File menu. Frame will find a file with the name of the document and the suffix (extension) that you specify, and will insert or replace the body text of that document by generated text.
4
Frame obtains the format of lines in a generated file from a flow on a reference page in that file.
The name (tag) of the flow is the same as the suffix of the generated file. The special flow is
normally on a reference page of the same name. That flow has a paragraph whose tag is named
according to the tag or marker type and the filename suffix.
For bookmarks, you will generate a List Of Markers (LOM) of type 11. Create a new empty document with a single text column on its body page. Add a reference page named LOM, with a flow
named LOM, with a single line having the tag Type11LOM. The line contains this text:
[/Page <$pagenum> /View [/XYZ null null null] /Title (<$paranum> <$markertext>) /OUT pdfmark
This line contains the arguments and the operator that the Distiller needs to create a bookmark. The
items in angle-brackets will be substituted by Frame during the course of file generation. Save this
as a Frame document with the name of the main document and the suffix LOM.
Now open your document file. Choose Generate/Update, specify List of Markers, Type 11, and
indicate an suffix LOM. Frame will discover the file that you just saved, so it will use the formats in
that file instead of generating a new file. The generated text will look something like this:
[/Page 3 /View [/XYZ null null null] /Title (4 Gamma) /OUT pdfmark
[/Page 4 /View [/XYZ null null null] /Title (5 Gamma correction) /OUT pdfmark
[/Page 5 /View [/XYZ null null null] /Title (6 NTSC gamma 2.2) /OUT pdfmark
Save this document as text, with the suffix .txt. Giving it the suffix txt emphasizes that it contains
text, but more importantly it avoids overwriting the LOM file whose format information will be
required the next time you generate.
When Frame generates a document, if it cant find an appropriate reference page with an appropriate flow and an appropriate paragraph tag, it creates whatever is missing. So if you have trouble
generating, see if Frame has created a new reference page or a new paragraph. Then you can diagnose what caused Frame to generate it.
7
Batch file
You will present to the Distiller a single small batch file that specifies your bookmark text file and
the PostScript file from your document. The file looks like this:
%!
% collect named .ps files into a single Distiller run. See Adobe Tech Note 4402.
%
/prun {/mysave save def RunFile clear cleardictstack mysave restore} def
(Macintosh HD:Frame Work:Manifesto.LOM.txt) prun
(Macintosh HD:Frame Work:Manifesto.doc.ps) prun
%EOF
Create this file in Frame and Save As ... Text, or use your favourite text editor. Replace Macintosh
HD and Frame Work with the full path to your documents. I use the suffix LOM.txt for the bookmark file and doc for the document file, but this is just my convention. Save the batch file with the
name you wish to give the completed document, and include the suffix .PS.
8
Distill
Finally, drop the batch file onto the Distiller. If anything is wrong, youll hear about it. But if all is
well, the Distiller will produce a single file named for the batch file and with the suffix .PDF.
Test the result by viewing it with the Acrobat Reader. The Reader normally starts up with bookmarks out of sight, so grab the window pane bar at the lower left and drag it to make the bookmarks visible, or choose Bookmarks from the View menu.
4
MA K I N G A C R OB A T B OOK MA R K S U S I N G F R A ME M AKER
Send me e-mail if you like the results! Better still, send me your PDF file!
9
The technique of generating bookmarks for a single Frame document can be applied to a Frame
book. If you are familiar with Frame books you should also be familiar with Frame Tables of
Content (TOCs). If you are not interested in books or TOCs, skip this section!
You will start with a document in one or more chapters of a Frame book file, including a TOC.
Add to your book a generated file for bookmarks, giving an suffix of LOM and one or more
markers to be collected. Be sure to put a dot in front of the suffix.
You will use a batch file to present all of your PostScript files to the Distiller in one session. This is
necessary due to a series of three circumstances. First, Frame puts any generated file on its own
page or pages. Second, when Frame prints a book to a PostScript file, it makes each chapter into a
self-contained PostScript file. Third, the Distiller starts page numbering at 1 for each PostScript file it
processes. This combination of circumstances means that you must present a single file to the
Distiller, to preserve the page numbers of your bookmarks.
You want your bookmarks to be included in the PDF file, but not the PostScript code that generates
them! The batch file bypasses the bookmark chapter, but the first actual chapter in your book
must reset page numbering to 1. Acrobat accommodates only page numbering starting at 1 and
incrementing throughout the PDF file, so you must not restart page numbering anywhere else.
Since the bookmark file has the suffix txt, you can print the entire book at once into separate .ps
files, even the bookmark document, without disturbing the bookmark PostScript file.
Frame does not as of version 4.0.4 provide direct access to the total page count of a book. If
you wish to reference the total page count in the front matter, you must work around this by using
a cross-reference to the variable <$lastpagenum> on a paragraph of its own in the last chapter of
the book. This messy business is documented in the Frame manual (page count, in book file).
10 Bookmarks from paragraphs
Your bookmarks could be taken from paragraph tags instead of from markers. For example you
could collect paragraphs having tags Heading1 for both the Table of Contents and the bookmark
file. But for the reasons that I mentioned earlier in Inserting the bookmarks, I recommend that you
generate the bookmarks from markers.
If you choose to collect paragraph tags instead, rename the reference page, rename its flow, and
change the paragraph tag of your formatting string. Also, change <$markertext> to <$paratext> in
the format string.
4
Charles A. Poynton
56A Lawrence Avenue E
Toronto, ON M4N 1S3
CANADA
tel +1 416 486 3271
fax +1 416 486 3657
Poynton@inforamp.net
Inrernal
Code
Name
Source
Default
Type
Ordering
Generated List
TOC
TOC
Table of Contents
Para
Collate
LOF
LOF
List of Figures
Para
Collate
LOT
LOT
List of Tables
Para
Collate
LOP
LOP
List of Paragraphs
Para
Collate
LOM
LOM
List of Markers
Markers
Collate
AML
AML
Markers
Sort
APL
APL
Sort
REF
LR
List of Referencesd
References
Collate
Generated Index
IX
IDX
Standard Index
Marker
Index
Sort
AIX
IOA
Index of Authors
Marker
Author
Sort
SIX
IOS
Subject Index
Marker
Subject
Sort
IOM
IOM
Index of Markers
Marker
Sort
IREF
IR
Index of References
References
Sort
Condition Tags
External Cross-Refs
Fonts
Imported Graphics
Publishers and Subscribers
Unresolved Cross-Refs
Header/Footer $1
Header/Footer $2
Index
Comment
Subject
Author
Glossary
Equation
Hypertext
Cross-Ref
Conditional Text
Type 11 through Type 25
1 of 1
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/Advanced_paragraph_numbers
Yes, this is possible - even easy - but you must meet a few
conditions. The first condition is that your chapter title, figures,
tables and equations must be in the same Flow. In practice this means that
ALL of the content of your chapter must be in the same flow. That turns
out to be easy if you are willing to use anchored frames to contain your
figures. If you want to use UNanchored frames - frames that are glued to
the page - then what you ask will be a nuisance. In Frame 3.1 or Frame 4
you are forced to use unanchored frames if you have figures that span
columns, say in a two-column layout. I assume your thesis has a one-column
layout. In Frame 5, this restriction is removed, since in Frame 5 an
anchored frame can span columns.
> F:Fig. <n+>.<n=0>.
> T:Table <n+>.<n=0>.
> E:(<n+>.<n=0>)
The second condition is that your chapter title, figures, tables and
equations must be numbered with the same series label. You are forcing
different series labels for these elements. This is sort of OK for a
single-chapter document, but is not necessary, and precludes putting
elements of numbering sequences together as you wish to do.
Instead, take a different approach. Place all of your numbering elements
into a single "autonumber vector" (my term), comprising chapter, section,
figure, table and equation elements. I recommend that you use no series
label at all.
> Now I initiate the numbering by putting 3 paragraphs at the
> beginning of each chapter (using white fonts):
Forget the white stuff. Make a Chapter autonumber like this:
<n+>< =0>< =0>< =0>< =0>
Make figure, table and equation autonumbers like this:
Figure <n>.< ><n+>< >< >
Table <n>.< >< ><n+>< >
Eqn <n>.< >< >< ><n+>
It is my experience that whitewash is OK for a really quick and dirty
workaround, but eventually produces big trouble in a document that has to
be maintained. Most tempations to use white can be overcome by reading the
manual (or consulting the Framers) to find a better way to do things, even
if it's poorly documented. I confess that there are a few situations where
it is necessary, but thankfully yours is not one of them.
C.
Charles Poynton
poynton@poynton.com [Mac Eudora/MIME/BinHex]
<http://www.inforamp.net/~poynton/>
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/exporting_Frame_graphics_as_EPS
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/exporting_Frame_graphics_as_EPS
digress.
C.
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/FrameMensa_Quiz_1%2CQUIZ
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/FrameMensa_Quiz_1%2CMotivation
Path: inforamp.net!ts4-05.inforamp.net!user
From: poynton@ poynton.com (Charles Poynton)
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
Subject: Re: FrameMensa Quiz #1 -- Paragraph Spacing
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 14:33:35 +0000
Lines: 82
Message-ID: <Poynton-2108951433350001@ts4-05.inforamp.net>
References: <Poynton-1908951756560001@ts4-13.inforamp.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ts4-05.inforamp.net
In article <Poynton-1908951756560001@ts4-13.inforamp.net>, I presented a quiz.
A correspondent writes,
> This Quiz. What is the practical use of such paragraph tags?
The quiz is not arbitrary. To explain why I want such a format, I have to
start a long way back.
A book is easiest to read when the paper is very white and the ink is very
black. Technically, in addition to fairly "bright" paper with a
reflectance of 0.75 or more, we also want a high "contrast ratio" between
white and black, that is, a high ratio between reflectance of the paper
(say 0.75) and the reflectance of the ink (say 0.02).
But paper is somewhat transparent. The paper used for a book is thinner
than the paper used in a laserprinter, so even more transparent. Open your
photocopier's cover and take a copy of the empty glass -- if you like,
take a copy of the ceiling of your photocopy room, out of focus. This will
produce a piece of paper entirely covered with black toner. Place this
sheet immediately behind the page of the book that you are reading. The
page will become quite dark.
The ink on the reverse of the page you are reading has the same effect -it absorbs light and darkens the face of the page.
You may have once made a photocopy from a newspaper, to find that in the
copy the area between the lines was darkened somewhat by the content on
the reverse of the page. You can alleviate this effect when making a
photocopy by backing such a page with the black sheet that I explained how
to make a moment ago. This is not a feasible solution for reading, but the
photocopier machinery is insensitive to the absolute reflectance of white,
and responds only to the contrast ratio.
Take a book of the highest quality, a book on sculpture or painting say.
(Do not try this with a "computer" book). Hold an opened, single page up
to the light. You will see that the lines of type facing you are set
exactly on top of the lines of type facing the other way -- the lines are
on a fixed grid. Even if a section heading or some other element
intervenes, in a really well composed book, the grid is maintained
throughout the height of every page. This arrangement makes sure that the
dark type on the reverse side of a page has the minimum impact on the
contrast ratio.
Another reason for the grid is more esoteric. If you read the works of the
classic typographers, you find that they all agree that a regular vertical
division of space lends a pleasing rhythm to a piece. Here's Bringhurst:
Time is divisible into any number of increments. So is space. But for
working purposes, time in music is divided into a few proportional
intervals: halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths and so on. And time in
music is measured. Add a quarter note to a bar whose time is already
accounted for and, somewhere nearby, the equivalent of the quarter note
must come out. Phrasing and rhythm can move in and out of phase -- as
they do in the singing of Billie Holiday and the trumpet solos of Miles
Davis -- but the force of blues phrasing and syncopation vanishes if
the beat is lost.
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/FrameMensa_Quiz_1%2CMotivation
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/FrameMensa_Quiz_1%2CANSWER
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/FrameMensa_Quiz_1%2CANSWER
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/Last_page_number_of_book
> Does anyone know of a way to [refer to the number of pages in a book,
> like page 37 of 224], apart from a cross-reference to something in the
> last page.
The consensus of the Framers is that there is no automatic way, but the
cross-reference doesn't have to target the last page. Insert a
paragraph containing the variable <$lastpagenum> anywhere in the last
book component. Some people put a paragraph on the first page of the
last chapter and paint it white so as noit to appear in the finished
product, but a better approach is to put the paragraph on a master
page. In any book component, obtain the page number of the last page in
the book through a cross-reference to the text of that paragraph.
Many requests have been made for Frame to introduce a variable for this
purpose. Frame's reluctance to implement this feature may stem from a
potential user-interface trap if chapters in the book restart page
numbering or use prefixes in page numbers. If a book has pages i
through xvi of front matter and body pages 1 through 48, it seems to
me that <$booklastpagenum> should return 48 and not 64. But if the last
page of the book is G-19, what should <$booklastpagenum> return? I
propose that the variable simply return the actual page number of the
last page of the book, G-19, not the count of pages in the book. My
proposed variable name makes this interpretation clear. It would be
guaranteed valid if no pages have been inserted or deleted since
Generate/Update. Some people might find <$bookpagecount> useful.
C.
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/not_all_settings_are_specd
Path: inforamp.net!ts9-03.inforamp.net!user
From: poynton@poynton.com (Charles Poynton)
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
Subject: Re: Renaming P-graph Styles
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 14:13:57 +0000
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <Poynton-2308951413570001@ts9-03.inforamp.net>
References: <41dnat$7f4@internal-dns.peerlogic.com> <ceej-2208952123080001@n2-1414.dynamac.genmagic.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ts9-03.inforamp.net
In article <41dnat$7f4@internal-dns.peerlogic.com>, Kevin Walsh
<kwalsh@peerlogic.com> wrote:
> When I try to rename a paragraph style, I get the message:
>
>
Not all setting are specified.
>
Fill in the settings, and try again.
>
> All settings looked fine to me. What's happening?
In article <ceej-2208952123080001@n2-14-14.dynamac.genmagic.com>,
ceej@genmagic.com (C J Silverio) replied:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/no_foilio_on_blank_verso
Path: inforamp.net!ts1-14.inforamp.net!user
From: poynton@poynton.com (Charles Poynton)
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
Subject: Re: Q: *Empty* Pages Between Chapters
Date: Sun, 03 Sep 1995 03:11:45 +0000
Lines: 66
Message-ID: <Poynton-0309950311450001@ts1-14.inforamp.net>
References: <41pmll$k9o@hera.easynet.de> <susan-2808950939580001@semiramis.gordian.com>
<41sth7$5ou@bug.rahul.net> <42550l$g5e@jabba.ess.harris.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ts1-14.inforamp.net
Dear Frame,
Request for "enhancement":
Repair Generate/Update so that pages are neither added nor deleted from
book components in order to satisfy odd/even page conditions between
components. Instead, simply maintain page numbers appropriately. When
Printing a whole book, insert completely empty pages as necessary.
This is important because standsard practice in book publishing is "no
folio on blank verso" pages -- Frame Technology itself adheres to this
convention in its own manual Using FrameMaker, and few of your users would
suspect that you have to intervene manually at every edit cycle to get
this behavior from your product.
C.
Dear Framers,
In article <42550l$g5e@jabba.ess.harris.com>, Cheryl Woodside <caw>
[sic]wrote:
> ... when you generate the book, and it reads that a chapter must start on
> a right page ("Read from File"), it adds the extra page to the previous
> chapter and changes the chapter's setting to "Even Pages."
I've confirmed this to be Frame's behavior, and I don't like it.
As far as I'm concerned, Frame has no business messing with the settings
of Chapter 5 just because Chapter 6 starts on a right page. There's no
logical reason for it. Chapter 5's Delete Empty Pages and Chapter 6's
Start on Right Page are in no way inconsistent.-- Frame just needs to keep
track of the page numbers, and needs to make sure that appropriate empty
pages are imaged (a PostScript showpage and nothing else) when a book file
is printed.
But Frame changes Chapter 5's settings upon Generate/Update, depending on
Chapter 6's settings. Yecch.
If the implementation of Frame requires that a page be added to Chapter 5
in order to properly accommodate the intervening empty page, OK, but that
page should have a master of None and it should evaporate of its own
accord if Chapter 5 grows.
If I WANT headers and footers on blank versos this is easy -- I can set
each chapter to "Make Page Count Even". That will cause a Left master to
be used without any intervention on my part, and "the right thing" happens
on insertion and deletion of pages.
> [Frame's] own Users Manual has blank last pages when page count is odd.
This is the convention in book publishing: "No folio on a blank verso."
I'm about to deliver a 350 page book to Wiley, and I'm going to be annoyed
to make a pass through to manually set all those blank versos to None to
conform to Wiley's house style. Then I'll be annoyed again when I re-edit,
because those damn None pages stick around unless explicitly deleted. I
confess I had assumed that Frame would work correctly, and my suspicion
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/no_foilio_on_blank_verso
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/one_or_more_spaces
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/one_or_more_spaces
> 4
> 5
> 6
>
> All
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/one_or_more_spaces
C.
Charles Poynton
<http://www.inforamp.net/~poynton>
<mailto:poynton@poynton.com> [Mac Eudora, MIME, BinHqx]
tel:
416 486 3271
fax:
416 486 3657
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/Shrinkwrap_leaves_a_1_pt_gap
Path: inforamp.net!ts1-12.inforamp.net!user
From: poynton@poynton.com (Charles Poynton)
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
Subject: Re: Shrink-wrap leaves a 1 pt border
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 1995 13:04:04 +0000
Lines: 114
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <Poynton-1308951304040001@ts1-12.inforamp.net>
References: <40e6t0$9pp@yuggoth.ucsb.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ts1-12.inforamp.net
In article <40e6t0$9pp@yuggoth.ucsb.edu>, steve@tweedledee.ucsb.edu (Steve
Trainoff) wrote:
> when I import my graphics [in 3.0.1] I use the "shrink-wrap" command to
> shrink the enclosing frame to the size of my graphic. Unfortunately FM
> leaves a 1 point border around the graphic.
This behavior is evident in Frame 4 and Frame 5 as well. In this situation
you have two frames -- the frame with the equation or the graphic, and its
surrounding anchored frame, which FrameMaker has made two points wider and
two points higher. In your post you use the term "border" loosely -- I'll
call it the "slop zone". Strictly speaking, Border refers to what is
painted by the Pen around a frame (unless the Pen is set to None). Border
doesn't affect positioning or size.
I assume that Frame introduced the slop zone to avoid the confusion that
would result among inexperienced users if the two frames were put right on
top of each other -- the newbie wouldn't know how to select one and not
the other, he might not even realize that two frames were involved. I'm
sure that the Frame designer or programmer that decided to do this meant
well, but the two point discrepancy is a big nuisance if you are trying to
achieve precision, simplicity and good typography. A similar technique is
used by Frame when it imports a graphic onto the page or into a text
column: the graphic appears at the center of a frame that's not one but
TWELVE points wider and higher than the graphic.
You can defeat the slop zone by manually setting Offset from Top and
Offset from Left of the interior (equation or imported graphic) frame to
zero, and then setting the Height and Width of the exterior (surrounding)
frame to be exactly the same as the Height and Width of the equation or
imported graphic. But what a pain. On my Mac, I already have my finger on
the Option key to invoke Shrink-Wrap (Option-Keypad *), otherwise I would
suggest to Frame that Option-Shrink-Wrap should produce an exact fit. But
some mechanism should be available to produce a fit that isn't sloppy. How
about a preference setting for "Slop zone" that would default to 1 point
for the newbies, 6 points for imported graphics, but that could be set to
zero for precision work?
Related to the issue of surrounding frames, FrameMaker enforces a minimum
0.015 point (1/4800 inch) width on any border. This setting is
inconsequential if Pen is set to to None, but sometimes I wish I could
just set it to zero.
Here's another problem. High-quality typefaces are designed so that the
tops of the characters all appear, optically, to have the same elevation.
The top of a character like "T" is located along the top boundary of the
em-square. But the top of the curve in a capital "O" (or S or Q or C) must
extend beyond the em-square in order to achieve an optical match. If the
font designer makes the top of the O precisely match the top of the T,
when they're set together it looks like the O came from a smaller font.
In FrameMaker, when you put a text frame directly on the page, the tops of
these characters are rendered correctly, slightly outside the text frame.
But if the text is set within in an anchored or unanchored frame, with an
Offset from Top of zero, the excursions outside the em-square are cropped
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/Shrinkwrap_leaves_a_1_pt_gap
in Frame. Here's
fixed (minimum
a paragraph is
space character
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/Frame_Acrobat
Path: inforamp.net!woody07.inforamp.net!user
From: poynton@poynton.com (Charles Poynton)
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
Subject: Re: Frame-Acrobat
Date: Thu, 02 Feb 1995 22:40:53 -0500
Organization: Poynton Vector
Lines: 134
Message-ID: <poynton-0202952240530001@woody07.inforamp.net>
References: <Larry.Dybala.4.0014E919@psl-online.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: coach13.inforamp.net
Steve Weyer writes,
> Charles checks this group, but I'll send him email ...
You guys are talking about me while my back's turned! First, to answer Lisa,
> Can anyone tell me how to get a copy of Charles Poynton's tech note?
> Or any other such tech notes?
A page of descriptions and links is at
<http://www.inforamp.net/~poynton/Poynton-frame.html>
If you don't have a web browser, get one! Seriously, the readers of this group
are by definition specialists in technical communication and the distribution of
information. The web is vital in that respect. I have written a document about
using a Mac to access the net using a dial-up PPP service provider. You can find
its description and location in the README at the top level of my ftp
directory. It's also on the web linked from my home page (in the signature
below), but if you're reading it from the web, you don't need it unless you
want to learn about dialup PPP, or you have a flaky MacTCP/MacPPP connection
and want to fix it.
Now, down to the business of these Acrobat links. As Steve correctly
points out, my procedure merely adds PostScript code to the PostScript
that you pull from Frame. The procedure just adds bookmarks. It will
work in any scenario below. The previous version of the note omitted
the to mention a few limitations of current Frame implementations with
respect to PostScript generation and pdfmark inclusion. I will
summarize these limitations. None of these are directly implicated in
the bookmark procedure, although there's an indirect connection.
First of all, Frame 4.0.2 or later on Mac produces in its PostScript "pdfmark"
operators corresponding to hypertext crossreferences. When distilled, those
operators generate hypertext links in the resulting PDF file. It's very nice!
BUT -- Frame on a Mac cannot produce a single PostScript file from a book. It
produces a SEPARATE PostScript file from ECAH Frame file in a book (call them
"chapters"). Each of these PostScript files appears to start with page one, and
all of the internal crossreference links (call them intrachapter links) are
referenced to page one. When you concatenate for distilling in a single job, the
pages will all image correctly, but the hypertext links internal to each chapter
will all collide at the front of the book. "Known bug." Furthermore, Frame's
Postscript includes code for intrachapter links, but has no PostScript code
(pdfmark operators) for crossreferences outside the chapter (interchapter
links).
Now, Frame on UNIX and Windows produces a single PostScript file for a book.
BUT -- Frame on UNIX and Windows versions don't produce any pdfmark
operators. The current versions offer no possibility of Acrobat links.
"Known problem." This is contrary to Steve's note (which is otherwise a
very good summary and has many good tips) -- I too shared this
misconception until Rick Oliver corrected it.
SO you can have (i) a one-chapter book with fully functional links [Mac],
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/Frame_Acrobat
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/FrameMaker_last_char_of_para
Path: inforamp.net!woody03.inforamp.net!user
From: poynton@inforamp.net (Charles A. Poynton)
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
Subject: Re: How to prevent changing the standard font of a paragraph?
Date: Sun, 04 Dec 1994 14:09:38 -0500
Organization: InfoRamp inc., Toronto, Ontario (416) 363-9100
Lines: 85
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <poynton-0412941409380001@woody03.inforamp.net>
References: <3bk0di$24k@sunserver.lrz-muenchen.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: woody03.inforamp.net
In article <3bk0di$24k@sunserver.lrz-muenchen.de>,
sta@mmk.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de wrote:
> [FM4/Solaris] If I change the font format ... while writing AT THE END
of a paragraph,
> and I change it back to the standard format ... then the standard font
> of the WHOLE paragraph will change to the previous selected format.
This is apparently a bug. On 4.0.4p1 on my Mac Quadra, changing the size
or weight or angle of just the last character of a paragraph -- the
character immediately preceding the paragraph mark -- would cause the
entire paragraph to change, just as Holger observed. It was clearly a bug
and not a feature because Undo would only undo the change to the intended
character and not to the rest of the paragraph. Same deal for the last
character of a table entry, the character before the end-of-flow mark.
Changing the character format of just that one character would make the
whole entry change.
But it's flaky -- today, I can't recreate it.
How about this one -- a display bug where any character with a decender
gets displayed propped up on an x-height or so worth of pedestal. Printing
was fine. The bug was zoom-factor dependent -- changing zoom factor
sometimes made it go away. But usually only for a while - it would come
back. Quitting Frame and restarting would make it go away for a while,
anything from twenty minutes to six hours of heavy use. But eventually it
would come back. This on a system with all the TrueType fonts ripped out
-- which is the recommended situation -- running SuperATM 3.6. I could
reproduce it quite reliably with all extensions disabled except ATM.
The problem disappeared when I upgraded to System 7.5 and ATM 3.8.1LE.
Anyone else seen it?
If you have read this far, you must be concerned about bugs and
idiosynchracies. Does it bug anyone else how whitespace at the end of a
line affects wordspace and letterspace calculations? In PageMaker, even in
Microsoft Word, a space character at the end of a line makes no
contribution whatsoever to justification or wordspacing -- it even floats
off past the end of the column if necessary. This is as it should be.
Frame has no typographic sense here -- every space character at the end of
a line contributes to squeezing wordspace or even letterspace to its left.
In a document with Smart Spaces, the extent of the damage is limited an en
or so, but if you run with smart spaces off, amazing things happen. As you
add spaces immediately left of the line end (paragraph mark, end of flow,
or line break), the rest of the line starts squeezing into less and less
space. The line-breaking machinery of Frame refuses to allow the line
formatter to make a new break solely because of space characters, so it
squeezes out to infinity if it has to, well past violating the word space
parameters that you have set in the Advanced properties of the Paragraph
Designer.
It's even funnier in a Centered paragraph. As you add space at the end of
a centered line, with default wordspace parameters (min 90, opt 100, max
110), first the text in the line gets leterspaced a little wider, then
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/FrameMaker_last_char_of_para
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/Small_Caps_character_format
Path: inforamp.net!woody07.inforamp.net!user
From: poynton@poynton.com (Charles Poynton)
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
Subject: Re: Small Caps character formatting
Date: Thu, 02 Feb 1995 19:23:16 -0500
Lines: 46
Message-ID: <poynton-0202951923160001@woody07.inforamp.net>
References: <3gpmb1$cog@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: woody07.inforamp.net
In article <3gpmb1$cog@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, George Thiruvathukal
<gt2727@coewl.cen.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
>
You accurately describe word processor and even page layout lingo for
small caps but they generally look terrible, because they are produced in
exactly the way you describe: the smaller caps are just shrunk big caps.
The problem is that the stem width -- line weight, if you like -- changes
in proportion to the shrinkage. At 72 dpi you can't tell the difference
but it doesn't cut it as typography, not even on a 300 dpi LaserWriter.
You can do this in Frame, if you like, by clicking the Small Caps
attribute in the Character Designer, or the comparable attribute in the
Default Font panel of the Paragraph Designer.
If you want typographic-quality small caps, then you have to buy an
"expert" font that includes, in addition to the uppercase alphabet, a
small-caps alphabet whose stems have the right weight. These "real" small
caps can really make a polished document. You get them simply by choosing
the font -- the big ones are where you expect on the keyboard, and the
little ones are .. well, they're where you expect, too. .
Expert fonts usually also include old-style figures (OSF), in other words
lower-case figures, with descenders. In non-technical matter -- and even
technical matter set classically -- these can look very sharp.
This all paraphrased from Robert Bringhurst, "The Elements of Typographic
Style".
Want more info? Ask in comp.fonts.
C.
Charles Poynton
<http://www.inforamp.net/~poynton>
<mailto:poynton@poynton.com> [Mac Eudora, MIME, BinHqx]
tel:
416 486 3271
fax:
416 486 3657
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/publ_quality_screenshots
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/publ_quality_screenshots
fax:
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/Acrobat_links_FrameMaker_xref
(A copy of this message has also been posted to the following newsgroups:
comp.text.frame, comp.text.pdf)
An anonymous correspondent unfamiliar with FrameMaker asks about making
Acrobat links. I explain the basics, then segu into some Frame esoterica.
>
>
>
>
I see that Microsoft Word has traumatized you, locked you in the 80's.
In Frame, you can arrange for this all to happen more or less
automatically. Don't type the literal text "see section 3.4". Instead,
when you want to insert a crossreference, choose Cross-Reference from the
Special menu (or hit Command-K for "Kross-reference").
A dialog box invites you to choose a Source Document -- select an open
document, perhaps the document you're in, perhaps a different document.
Define a Format -- in this case, use
see section <$paranum>
Choose a Source Type -- select the paragraph tag that you use for section
headings. Finally, pick a Reference Source from a scrolling list that
displays all the numbers and titles of your section "paragraphs".
Click OK. Your desired "see section 3.4" now appears at the insertion
point. But it hasn't been inserted as editable text, it's an atomic
crossreference ("marker"). Should you insert or delete a few sections
ahead of 3.4, just Update Cross-References and the reference will be
renumbered.
These atomic crossreferences will Distill automatically into Acrobat PDF
links. No muss, no fuss, no bother.[1]
I personally prefer to use a crossreference that displays the section
title (italicized) and its page number, instead of the section number. The
section title gives the reader a sense of the content of the referenced
section without forcing him to go there. The page number allows the reader
of a paper copy to immediately turn to the indicated page rather than
having to leaf through the document scanning through the sections. I omit
the word "see" from my format definitions, to allow me to use the same
format for references that differ grammatically. Instead of "See section
3.4", I may choose in a particular passage to write "Section 3.4 gives
details of this procedure." The grammatical variety will be appreciated by
your reader.
Once you start exploiting crossreferences, you will be tempted to invent
many specialized formats, one for Sections, one for Chapters, one for
Figures and so on. But I define just a few formats that are useful for
almost all types of reference. I make sure to use style names (tags) that
are sensible words like Section, Chapter, Figure, Table and so on. I
defined this crossreference format, which I call "on_page":
<Italic><$paratext><Default P Font> on page\ <$pagenum>
As you may guess, the codes <Italic> and <Default P Font> turn italics on
and off. The code <$paratext> inserts the text contained in the referenced
item, in this case, the title of section 3.4. When you redefine a format,
just Update Cross-References -- in this example, a reference that
previously appeared "see section 3.4" will take the form "see Delivering
Babies on page 121" (where the two words Delivering Babies are
italicized). I place a nonbreaking space between the word page and the
page number; this is entered on a Mac as the two character sequence
backslash-space.
http://www.poynton.com/notes/short_subjects/FrameMaker/Acrobat_links_FrameMaker_xref
Commercial pages:
Frame Technology
Frank Stearns Associates
Charles - links
2000-01-13
My thinking about typography and graphic design has been greatly influenced by these three books.
I consider them to be mandatory reading for any aspiring typographer or illustrator:
Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style. Second edition (Vancouver: Hartley &
Marks, 1996).
Jan Tschichold, The Form of the Book (Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 1991). Originally
published in German in 1975.
Edward R. Tufte, Envisioning Information (Cheshire, CT: Graphic Press, 1990).
For the first two,
Hartley & Marks Publishers Inc.
3661 West Broadway,
Vancouver, BC V6R 2B8
Canada
+1 604 739 1771
There's apparently a branch office, probably for taking orders from U.S. addreses:
Box 147
Point Roberts, WA 98281
U.S.A.
I also recommend this classic:
Jan Tschichold, The New Typography (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1995).
The book is now in paperback, available at Amazon.
I am engaged in a campaign to modernize the archaic habit, recommended in the Chicago Manual of
Style and many other places, of typesetting a dash as an em dash with no spaces. Here's a lovely quote
from Bringhurst:
"The em dash is the nineteenth-century standard, still prescribed in many editorial style
books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the oversized
space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian
typography."
Bringhurst suggests - and I concur - that an appositional phrase should be set off by spaced en-dashes.
Other Typography links ...
Charles
1999-08-03
This note explains how to write quantities and units of the Systme international d'units (SI),
colloquially known as the metric system. I catalog the power-of-ten prefixes, and I list some important
units.
Write a numeric value with units in either the journalistic style, using prefix and unit names (four
kilohertz); or the scientific style, using prefix and unit symbols (4 kHz). Don't mix these styles: Do not
mix a prefix name with a unit symbol (WRONG: kiloHz), or a prefix symbol with a unit name
(WRONG: kHertz). Avoid "abbreviations" for units (WRONG: sec., amp); use the unit names or
symbols instead.
If you are writing for an international audience, express values in the metric (SI) system used by the
majority of the world's population. If appropriate, follow an SI value with the equivalent Imperial value
in parentheses. Express the Imperial value with an accuracy comparable to the original: write 5 m
(16 feet), not 5 m (16.4042 feet). Spell out inch, foot, pound and so on: Do not abbreviate to in, ft, and lb
unless space is an overriding concern. Do not use " and ' symbols for inch and foot: These symbols are
easily lost in reproduction, and they are unfamiliar to a large fraction of the world's population.
You are reading the HTML version of this document. The HTML has has crude representations of
some of the characters in the typographic original; it also suffers from lack of line-break control.
A typographic-quality version of this document is available in Acrobat PDF format, in US letter size
optimized for printing (PDF format, 81289 bytes).
Journalistic Style
In free text, use journalistic style for units and measurements: Spell out numbers one through ten in
words; express numbers larger than that in numerals. Follow a number by a space, then the prefix name
and unit name spelled out entirely in lower case and without spaces: four megahertz, 2.2 microfarads,
3.5 megahertz, 75 ohms.
Use hundred, thousand, million, and so on, only for pure numbers. For a number with a unit, spell out
the SI prefix: four kilowatts (not four thousand watts). Avoid using words for extreme quantities larger
than a million, because billion, trillion, and so on, have different numerical values in different countries.
If you absolutely must use words, follow the example of the BBC World Service: say thousand million
or million million.
http://www.poynton.com/notes/units/index.html (1 di 6) [15/01/2005 16:28:54]
Use a hyphen between a numeral and its unit only when necessary to form a compound modifier, and
only with a unit name, not a unit symbol: 3.5-inch diskette, 35-millimeter film. To avoid the confusion
of two hyphens when a negative number is involved, as in -12-volt power, use a space instead of a
second hyphen.
In many countries a comma indicates the decimal: in these countries the notation 10,000 indicates
precisely ten, not ten thousand! Some of your readers will find it ambiguous if you use a comma as a
separator between three-digit groups. In a numeric value having four or more consecutive digits, use a
space to separate groups of three digits, both left and right of the decimal point.
Scientific Style
In a table, an illustration or a technical text, use the scientific style for measurements and units. Write
the number in figures, followed by a nonbreaking space. Then write the prefix symbol and the unit
symbol with appropriate capitalization and no spaces: 4 MHz,
,
. Separate the last digit
from the unit with a nonbreaking space; this will prevent clumsy line breaks.
SI prefix symbols are capitalized for multipliers
and smaller.
A unit symbol is written in lower case, except that its initial letter is capitalized if the unit is named after
a person. These are symbols, not abbreviations or contractions: Do not use periods or other punctuation.
To avoid confusion with math symbols ("variables"), do not italicize unit symbols.
Use appropriate capitalization. The symbol k for kilo - a multiplier of 1000 - combines with hertz as
kHz; the symbol for decibel is written dB. A popular computer in 1987 had a nameplate stating its
memory capacity as 1 mb. In fact it had a megabyte of memory, properly written as 1 MB, not a
millibit!
When you write a negative sign, use a nonbreaking hyphen instead of a regular hyphen. This prevents
the sign from being left stranded at the end of the line: 400 V power results from using a standard hyphen,
-400 V power results from a nonbreaking hyphen. The former is, at the very least, confusing to your
reader. At its worst, it could compromise personal safety.
Dates
Different countries have different conventions for writing dates. A reader in the U.S.A. takes 08/04/50
to be August 4th, but a U.K. reader takes it to be the 8th of April. In the next century, will 01/02/03 be
the first, second or third day of the month? Avoid ambiguity. Write dates in the ISO/IEC 8824 form:
1996-06-07.
Unit Combinations
http://www.poynton.com/notes/units/index.html (2 di 6) [15/01/2005 16:28:54]
Use a raised dot between units combined by multiplication, to avoid ambiguity. N m for newton meter
avoids potential confusion with nanometer, nm.
per
Use the per notation for everyday units formed by division, such as miles per hour, mph; revolutions per
minute, rpm; and dots per inch, dpi.
slash
In a scientific or engineering unit formed by division, set off a single-element denominator with a slash:
write m/s for meters per second. I write b/s for bits per second, although some people use bps.
exponents
For a compound unit having a complex denominator, use exponent notation: write
per second squared (NOT m/s/s).
for meters
ohm
Use ohm when the
degrees
The temperature unit kelvin, K, properly has no degree sign. The non-SI symbols for Celsius ( C) and
Fahrenheit ( F) have degree signs in order to avoid ambiguity with coulomb C and farad F. The term
centigrade is obsolete; the proper term is Celsius.
Computing
b, B
Use little b for bit, big B for Byte. Spell these out where necessary to avoid ambiguity.
k
Little k - pronounced KEY-loh or kill-oh, spelled-out kilo - is the standard SI prefix for
not often used in computing.
(1000). It is
K
(1024) common in computing. Do not write or pronounce big K as
Use big K for the multiplier
kilo; to do so invites confusion with little k, 1000. Simply write it as upper-case K and pronounce it kay.
baud
The term baud does not apply to data rate, but to symbol rate. When you see the unit baud used in
computing, the unit b/s (bit per second) is nearly always meant.
mega, giga
When applied to a base unit other than bit, byte or pixel, M (mega) and G (giga) refer to the SI power-often multipliers
and
. Standard data communication rates are based on powers of ten and use
the SI multipliers, not power-of-two multipliers: 1.544 Mb/s denotes 1 544 000 bits per second; 19 200
bits per second is properly written 19.2 kb/s (not 19.2 Kb/s).
disk storage
When applied to bytes of disk storage capacity:
M (mega) denotes
G (giga) denotes
M (mega) denotes
G (giga) denotes
In computing, M (mega) and G (giga) are ambiguous. M could denote 1 000 000, 1 024 000, or
1 048 576. G could denote 1 000 000 000, 1 024 000 000, 1 048 576 000, or 1 073 741 824. The value
of the giga prefix in computing varies more than 7 percent depending on its context. If an exact value is
important, write out the whole number!
Further information
Information is available at BIPM, http://www.bipm.fr/enus/3_SI/.
Information is available at NIST, http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/. See Guide for the Use of the
International System of Units (SI) [NIST Special Publication 811] (Acrobat PDF format, 400 KB),
Typefaces for symbols in scientific manuscripts (Acrobat PDF format, 62 KB), and SI Unit rules and
style conventions - Check List for Reviewing Manuscripts.
Copyright 1999-06-30
Charles Poynton
This note explains how to write quantities and units in the Systme
international dunits (SI), loosely called the metric system. I catalog
the power-of-ten prefixes, and I list some important units.
Journalistic style
page 1
Scientific style
page 2
Dates
page 3
Unit combinations
page 3
Computing units
page 3
page 5
page 6
Write a numeric value with units in either the journalistic style, using
prefix and unit names (four kilohertz); or the scientific style, using prefix
and unit symbols (4 kHz). Dont mix these styles: Do not mix a prefix
name with a unit symbol (WRONG: kiloHz), or a prefix symbol with
a unit name (WRONG: kHertz). Avoid abbreviations for units
(WRONG: sec., amp); use the unit names or symbols instead.
Journalistic style
In free text, use journalistic style for units and measurements: Spell out
numbers one through ten in words; express numbers larger than that in
numerals. Follow a number by a space, then the prefix name and unit
name spelled out entirely in lower case and without spaces:
four megahertz, 2.2 microfarads, 3.5 megahertz, 75 ohms. (The C in
Celsius is capitalized.)
1 of 6
Use hundred, thousand, million, and so on, only for pure numbers. For
a number with a unit, spell out the SI prefix: four kilowatts (not four
thousand watts). Avoid using words for extreme quantities larger than
a million, because billion, trillion, and so on, have different numerical
values in different countries. If you absolutely must use words, avoid
ambiguity by following the example of the BBC World Service: Say
thousand million or million million.
Use a hyphen between a numeral and its unit only when necessary to
form a compound modifier, and only with a unit name, not a unit
symbol: 3.5-inch diskette, 35-millimeter film (WRONG: 35-mm film).
To avoid the confusion of two hyphens when a negative number is
involved, as in -12-volt power, use a space instead of a second hyphen.
In many countries a comma indicates the decimal: In these countries
the notation 10,000 indicates precisely ten, not ten thousand! Some of
your readers will find it ambiguous if you use a comma as a separator
between three-digit groups. In a numeric value having four or more
consecutive digits, use a space to separate groups of three digits, both
left and right of the decimal point.
Scientific style
In a table, an illustration or a technical text, use the scientific style for
measurements and units. Write the number in figures, followed by
a nonbreaking space. Then write the prefix symbol and the unit symbol
with appropriate capitalization and no spaces: 4 MHz, 286 mV, 2.2
F, 75 . Using a nonbreaking space prevents clumsy line breaks, such
as the break between 2.2 and F.
SI prefix symbols are capitalized for multipliers 106 and larger, and
lower case for multipliers 103 and smaller.
A unit symbol is written in lower case, except that its initial letter is
capitalized if the unit is named after a person. These are symbols, not
abbreviations or contractions: Do not use periods or other punctuation.
To avoid confusion with math symbols (variables), do not italicize
unit symbols.
Use appropriate capitalization. The symbol k for kilo a multiplier of
1000 combines with hertz as kHz; the symbol for decibel is
written dB. A popular computer in 1987 had a nameplate stating its
memory capacity as 1 mb. In fact it had a megabyte of memory, properly written as 1 MB, not a millibit!
When you write a negative sign, use a nonbreaking hyphen instead of
a regular hyphen. This prevents the sign from being left stranded: 400 V power results from using a standard hyphen, -400 V power
results from a nonbreaking hyphen. The former, at the very least, is
confusing to your reader; at its worst, it could compromise personal
safety.
Dates
Different countries have different conventions for writing dates.
A reader in the U.S.A. takes 08/04/50 to be August 4th, but a U.K.
reader takes it to be the 8th of April. In the next century, will 01/02/03
be the first, second or third day of the month? Avoid ambiguity. Write
dates in the ISO/IEC 8824 form: 1999-06-30.
Unit combinations
Use a raised dot between units combined by multiplication, to avoid ambiguity. N . m for newton . meter
avoids potential confusion with nanometer, nm.
per Use the per notation for everyday units formed by division, such as miles per hour, mph; revolutions per
minute, rpm; and dots per inch, dpi.
slash In a scientific or engineering unit formed by division,
set off a single-element denominator with a slash:
write m/s for meters per second. I write b/s for bits per
second, although some people use bps.
exponents For a compound unit having a complex denominator,
use exponent notation: write m.s -2 for meters per
second squared (NOT m/s/s).
ohm Use ohm when the symbol is unavailable (as in ASCII
character code).
degrees The temperature unit kelvin, K, properly has no degree
sign. The symbols for the non-SI units celsius (C) and
fahrenheit (F) have degree signs in order to avoid
ambiguity with SI units coulomb C and farad F. The
term centigrade is obsolete; the proper term is celsius.
Computing units
b, B Use little b for bit, big B for Byte. Spell these out where
necessary to avoid ambiguity.
k Little k pronounced KEY-loh or kill-oh, spelled-out
kilo is the standard SI prefix for 103 (1000). It is not
often used in computing.
prefix name
prefix
symbol
power-of-ten
yocto
zepto
atto
femto
pico
nano
micro
milli
y
z
a
f
p
n
1024
1021
1018
1015
1012
109
106
103
centi
deci
[unity]
deka
hecto
c
d
[none]
da
h
102
101
10 0
10+1
10+2
kilo
10+3
mega
giga
tera
peta
exa
zetta
yotta
M
G
T
P
E
Z
Y
10+6
10+9
10+12
10+15
10+18
10+21
10+24
unit
name
unit
symbol
derived
from
meter
length
kilogram
kg
mass
second
time
candela
cd
luminous intensity
mole
mol
quantity
named after
amount of substance
-3 .
liter
l, L
10
ohm
W . A -2
ampere
volume
resistance
electric current
Henri Ampre
kelvin
thermodynamic
temperature
William Thomson
(Lord Kelvin)
hertz
Hz
frequency
Heinrich Hertz
force
-1
-2
newton
joule
kg . m . s
N.m
energy
James Joule
watt
J . s -1
power
James Watt
volt
W . A -1
voltage
Alessandro Volta
Further information
Typographic-quality versions of this document are available in Acrobat PDF format. I provide
a version optimized for onscreen display (PDF format, 142646 bytes), and a version optimized
for printing on US-letter size paper (PDF format, 153498 bytes).
See also, This site is best experienced ...
See also, Ten Common Mistakes in the typesetting of technical documents.
There are several reasons to avoid this phrase. First, some web browsers do not have mice: they
activate links through means other than clicking. Second, web pages are often printed, or saved textonly! The notion of clicking on a phrase in its printed form is quite absurd; the absurdity reflects on
the author. Third, it is good information design and human interface design to put in a link an
indication of what is under the link. A sodapop machine doesn't have a button labelled Press here, it
has a button labelled 7-up!
Say, You can access a list of articles, or A list of articles is available. These phrases make perfect
sense, even when printed or displayed in text-only form without hypertext links.
it a mistake to use a black background, because color CRT displays have much higher contrast ratio
for black text on white than for white text on black. You must choose link colors carefully: many
people who set Netscape to use black background and white text neglect to change the link colors:
Their links display dark blue, which renders them virtually invisible against the black.
You should be aware that web technology cannot yet guarantee accurate color reproduction across
different platforms, so you have no guarantee of consistent color.
If you decide to use a background image, you should do so only with a good understanding of graphic
issues. A poorly-chosen background image can destroy the readability of your pages.
Restrain yourself from using <BLINK> just because Netscape implemented it. None of us will benefit
if we turn the web into a poor imitation of Las Vegas, and your visitor is unlikely to be impressed by a
page that is reminiscent of those TAKE A COUPON! blinking lights in sleazy supermarkets.
The assignment of glyphs - or shapes - to character codes between 0 and 127 is established by the ISO
646 standard, which is essentially the international version of ANSI X3.64 (ASCII). This standard
guarantees that 7-bit codes produce the same glyphs on different platforms.
The ISO 8859-1 Latin-1 standard conforms to ISO 646 for codes 0 to 127, but assigns additional
glyphs - mainly accented characters - to codes in the range 128-255. The Macintosh and Windows
operating systems do not respect the ISO 8859 standard, so codes in the range 128 to 255 produce
different glyphs when transported between these platforms. Most applications pay no special attention
to character sets, and inherit the character set native to the underlying operating system.
Web technology allows transport of 8-bit characters coded according to the ISO 8859-1. Web
browsers implement platform-dependent translation so that 8-bit characters received in a web page are
displayed correctly. Some browsers have an option setting to enable the translation; Netscape 1.1 for
the Mac comes with a setting that is not ISO Latin-1. Set your browser to conform to the standards of
the web: Set its character set to ISO Latin-1.
Few text editors implement the ISO 8859-1 character set directly, so creation of web pages using
characters in the range 128-255 is difficult. If you create a web page using a text editor that allows
insertion of codes in the range 128-255, you have two options: You must either take care to avoid or
remove characters in that range, or you must arrange to have those characters translated.
If you remove characters in the range 128-255 by stripping the eighth bit, the result is guaranteed to
comprise just 7-bit ASCII characters. But in stripping the eighth bit, you may inadvertently turn
characters into ASCII codes that you don't intend. On a Macintosh, if your document uses a bullet
character (Option-8), it will turn into a percent sign. It is a better idea to translate, and many utilities
are available to translate from a platform's native character code to ISO 8859-1.
Although eight-bit characters are handled well by the web browsers, transport of 8-bit characters by
other means - e-mail, ftp and physical media - remains problematic. In HTML there is provision to
convey accented characters and other characters of ISO 8859-1 using escaped entities that comprise
an ampersand, a short sequence of 7-bit ASCII letters, and a terminating semicolon. I recommend that
instead of translating to 8-bit ISO 8859-1 you translate to 7-bit ASCII with the escaped entities. This
will assure that your pages are transported easily and displayed correctly on any conformant browser.
A few important characters are not accommodated by ISO 8859-1. The most glaring omission is
typographic (curly) quotes. Your translator will turn these into straight quotes. The trademark sign
((TM)) is absent from ISO 8859-1. Provision has been made in HTML 3.0 for an escaped entity
™ but most browsers in use today do not conform to HTML 3.0 and would display ™
instead of the symbol that you want. Write that one out, (tm).
A handful of escaped entities are not handled properly by Macintosh browsers: avoid the superior
figures, fractions, y-acute, thorn, eth, and the so-called times symbol. If you don't know what these
are, you're probably not using them!
in other parts of the world, city code) using spaces instead of parentheses: parentheses are not
particularly computer-friendly, and many people handle telephone numbers using computers. In
Europe, do not indicate 0 in front of a city code: people who need it know to dial it, but if a person
unfamiliar with the convention dials the zero, his call will fail.
Choose a background color appropriate for those browsers, say [192, 192, 192] for a light gray. If you
use a custom background color or image, be aware that it will be ignored by less-sophisticated
browsers.
certain that a visitor will not have access to a file is to remove that file from your web directory.
Test locally
Your pages will be no pleasure for your visitor if they do not work as you yourself intend. Make sure
that your pages work for you before you subject someone else to them!
Test your pages locally, use the Open File capability of your favourite browser. Use two or three
different browsers, to see how they present things differently. Test your pages in black-and-white, to
preview how they will appear to a user who has only black-and-white display capability.
Validate
When you have finished making a page, that you run it through an HTML validation service to ensure
that it conforms to the technical requirements of HTML. If you do not do this, you cannot be sure that
it will work reliably on other browsers and other platforms than yours.
If you have manually created your HTML, you can fix it by hand. If you have used automated
conversion tools, you may have little scope to repair failures in validation. In this case, take the
validation report to the provider of your conversion tools.
11
13
14
1 of 10
There are several reasons to avoid this phrase. First, some web
browsers do not have mice: they activate links through means other
than clicking. Second, web pages are often printed, or saved textonly! The notion of clicking on a phrase in its printed form is quite
absurd; the absurdity reflects on the author. Third, it is good information design and human interface design to put in a link an indication of what is under the link. A sodapop machine doesnt have a
button labelled Press here, it has a button labelled 7-up!
Say, You can access a list of articles, or A list of articles is available.
These phrases make perfect sense, even when printed or displayed
in text-only form without hypertext links.
Dont say, Under Construction.
The web is so naturally dynamic that it seems to me redundant at
best, and cute at worst, to draw attention to this. So please, abolish
those silly Under Construction icons. If it werent under construction, it wouldnt be the web.
Dont say, Coming soon.
Your visitor will be very frustrated to access a link that says, Application Notes are available, only to be presented with a content-free
page that says Coming soon. Put the Coming soon or the not yet
available one level back, on the page with the link, so as to avoid
wasting your visitors time accessing a useless page.
Strive for visual consistency
Give your pages a consistent design, so your visitor maintains a
sense of continuity while at your site. Apply typographic wisdom: if
you center some elements on a page, center all the elements.
Dont put blue text on a black background
Remember the ransom-note days of desktop publishing, when
people thought that because they had access to forty fonts, they
had to use all of them in a single document? Thankfully those days
have passed in DTP, but Netscape has implemented codes that
allow an HTML document to specify the colors it wants to be
displayed in. Dont succumb to ransom-note color choice. If you are
not competent to choose colors, dont choose: let them default.
If you choose your own colors, choose a light background color and
dark text: the larger the differential between these two, the better
the contrast ratio, and the more legible your page. I consider it a
mistake to use a black background, because color CRT displays
have much higher contrast ratio for black text on white than for
white text on black. You must choose link colors carefully: many
people who set Netscape to use black background and white text
neglect to change the link colors. Their links display dark blue,
which renders them virtually invisible against the black.
You should be aware that web technology cannot yet guarantee
accurate color reproduction across different platforms, so you have
no guarantee of consistent color.
If you decide to use a background image, you should do so only
with a good understanding of graphic issues. A poorly-chosen background image can destroy the readability of your pages.
Restrain yourself from using <BLINK>. None of us will benefit if we
turn the web into a poor imitation of Las Vegas, and your visitor is
unlikely to be impressed by a page that is reminiscent of those
TAKE A COUPON! blinking lights in sleazy supermarkets.
Compose to HTML, not to a particular browser
Netscape browsers dominate the web at the moment, and it is
tempting to compose HTML that looks good when viewed with
Netscape. You may find that Netscapes Heading 1 lines, in <H1>
style, are displayed too large. You may choose Heading 3 <H3>
instead. I have fallen victim to this temptation, but its a bad idea.
HTML is designed to encapsulate the structure of a document,
leaving the presentation to the browser. If you tune a document to
a particular browser, your page is almost certain to appear a mess
to a different browser. Even if your visitor is using the same browser
that you use, if he has customized the fonts and sizes in his
browser, your document is likely to be poorly presented.
We can expect browser capability to improve, but it is unlikely that
you will be inspired to go back and retune your pages. If you stick
to the standard HTML structure, your pages will look no worse
today than anyone elses, and they will look better and better as
browsers improve. If you tune your pages, today they will look
better some of the time and worse some of the time, and they will
age very poorly as browsers improve.
If you have a document that begs to be presented typographically,
consider distributing it in Acrobat PDF format instead of or in
addition to HTML. Acrobat Reader is freely available for the major
platforms: Windows, MS-DOS, Mac, and UNIX. Acrobat Exchange
integrates well with the web.
matter how small). This indicates to the reader that accessing the
link will transfer the file. Avoid notations like download here and
download now, for the same reasons that you avoid click here.
If you link to an ftp directory, as opposed to a file, include a trailing
slash at the end of the URL. This indicates to your visitor and to
his web browser or ftp client that the item is a directory.
Code images correctly
Include WIDTH and HEIGHT information in image (IMG) links. This
allows a browser to complete page layout before accessing the
image, and avoids flashing due to re-layout. Choose the WIDTH
and HEIGHT of the actual image file; do not arbitrarily choose them
expecting the browser to scale the image, because not all browsers
have that capability, and in any case a scaled bitmap reproduces
poorly.
If your image forms part of a link, include an ALT tag describing the
image in words. You will be thanked by visitors without image
display capability, and by visitors who have disabled image display
(perhaps for reasons of speed).
If you have an inline image, make it small (10 KB or less), and save
it in GIF format (until PNG format is widespread). If you want to
provide for your visitor an image larger than that, make a small GIF
version of it a proxy and place the proxy on your page. Make
the proxy a link to the large image. If the large image is full color or
continuous-tone, save it in JPEG/JFIF format.
You can process a GIF bitmapped image so as to make some of its
pixels transparent. The opaque pixels will then be displayed against
the background color that was chosen by a preference set in your
visitors browser. If your visitor has a modern browser and you have
specified the appropriate codes in your HTML, it will display against
a background that you have chosen. If you choose to specify transparency, be aware that the less-sophisticated browsers will display
your image entirely opaque. Choose a background color appropriate for those browsers, say [192, 192, 192] for a light gray. If
you use a custom background color or image, be aware that it will
be ignored by less-sophisticated browsers.
Sign your work
It is frustrating to find a page on the web whose authorship is
unknown, especially when there are no other links on the page to
establish where it lives or what it relates to. Sign your pages.
If a user comes to a page from a foreign link, give him the opportunity to explore your home page or the rest of your pages: make
your signature a link, direct or indirect, to your home page.
At the bottom of every page, my signature is a link up within my
tree of pages. For a page other than the index.html file in a directory, I place a signature that names the directory and a link to
index.html in that directory. At the bottom of each index.html file
I refer to the title of the next level up, and place a link to ../
index.html. This enables my visitor to ascend the whole tree back
to my home.
At the bottom of my home page, my signature is a MAILTO link. If
my visitor hasnt discovered the information he wants in his
traversal of my pages, this invites him to send e-mail to me.
I include at the bottom of every page the date that I last modified
the page.
Conform to server conventions
Learn from your Internet service provider how to make your files
accessible to his web server.
If you use a UNIX server, include the lowercase L at the end of the
. html extension when you transfer, even if your local filenames are
limited by MS-DOS or Windows. Use UNIX (LF) line ends in text
files (including HTML) stored at a UNIX server.
Make sure every directory has a file index.html. If you do not do
this, then a visitor who manually enters the path to a directory will
be presented with a list of all of the files in that directory, perhaps
including some files that you do not want to advertise.
Your HTML pages include whatever file names and paths you need
for your links. The robots and wanderers will harvest filenames
from your HTML code, and add these referenced files to their
indices. If you want a file to be indexed, you should include its
name in another file that is indexed already: The robots will eventually find your new page!
You can place in your web directory a file whose name is not referenced in any of your pages. The robots will not discover this file.
But if a visitor guesses a name, index.bak or index.old for example,
there is no method to prevent the visitor from retrieving that file.
The only way to be absolutely certain that a visitor will not have
access to a file is to remove that file from your web directory.
10
... using your choice of web browser, and your choice of settings.
The pages are not optimized for any particular browser. Instead, to the extent that is reasonably easy
to achieve with commercially available tools, the pages are compliant with HTML standards, to assure
best possible performance across a wide range of browsers.
You do not have to download any "preview," alpha, beta, or newly-revised browser software, or plugins, before viewing this site.
The site uses inline graphic elements judiciously, so as to make loading of the pages as speedy as
possible.
Colors and backgrounds at this site have been chosen for high contrast. The scheme is this: black text,
white backgrounds. That leads to easy readability.
There are no empty, distracting animations.
There are no <BLINK> codes.
I do not require that you "resize your browser window" - you do not even have to know what that
means!
No gratuitous audio will download and play when you access any page at this site.
No page at this site will "refresh itself" without your asking it to.
Your interaction with this site will comprise retrieval of the pages - it's as simple as that. There is no
saved state. You will not be forced to register, provide passwords, eat cookies, edit your MIME types,
or say OK to arcane alerts about site security.
In order to avoid confusing your navigation, this site uses no frames.
There are no gratuitous JavaScripts that scroll jerky text across your status bar and mess up your
ability to see the destination URLs of links.
There are no <FONT FACE> codes based on assumptions about what fonts I think might be installed
on your system; I do not assume that you are using a particular operating system. In addition, there are
no <FONT SIZE> codes that make assumptions about what text sizes you like to see. I do not assume
that I know what text size is best for your display and for your vision; instead, I assume that you know
Abstract
The notation YUV, and the term luminance, are widespread in digital video. However, digital video
almost never uses Y'UV color difference components, and never directly represents the luminance of
color science. The common terms are almost always wrong. This note explains why. I urge video
engineers and computer graphics specialists to use the correct terms, almost always Y'CBCR and luma
Complete paper
Charles - Articles
1999-06-19
Charles Poynton
tel +1 416 413 1377
fax +1 416 413 1378
poynton @ poynton.com
www.inforamp.net/~poynton
1 of 4
601
Y = 0.299 R
+ 0.587 G
+ 0.114 B
The error also propagated into the digital image processing community.
A widely used book in that field states:
N.T.S.C. formulated a color coordinate system for transmission
composed of three tristimulus values YIQ. The Y tristimulus value
is the luminance of a color.
The video quantities are certainly not tristimulus values, which are, by
CIEs definition, proportional to intensity.
Loose nomenclature on the part of video engineers has misled
a generation of digital image processing, computer software, and
computer hardware engineers.
Conclusion: A plea
Using the term luminance for video Y is tantamount to using the word
cement instead of concrete to describe the main construction material
of a bridge. Lay people dont care, and experts can live with it, but people in the middle in this case, the programmers and engineers who
are reimplementing video technology in the computer domain are liable to draw the wrong conclusions from careless use of terms. Users
suffer from this, because the exchange of images is compromised.
I urge video engineers and computer graphics specialists to avoid YUV
and luminance, and to use the correct terms, YCBCR and luma.
Abstract
In this paper, I explain the R'G'B' and Y'CBCR 4:2:2 representations, and explain the technical aspects
of conversion between the two. I conclude by suggesting steps that can be taken during production
and post-production to avoid difficulty with the conversion.
Film, video, and computer-generated imagery (CGI) all start with red, green, and blue (RGB) intensity
components. In video and computer graphics, a nonlinear transfer function is applied to RGB
intensities to give gamma corrected R'G'B'. This is the native color representation of video cameras,
computer monitors, video monitors, and television.
The human visual system has poor color acuity. If R'G'B' is transformed into luma and chroma, then
color detail can be discarded without the viewer noticing. This enables a substantial saving in data
capacity - in "bandwidth", or in storage space. Because studio video equipment has historically
operated near the limit of realtime recording, processing, and transmission capabilities, the
subsampled Y'CBCR 4:2:2 format has been the workhorse of studio video for more than a decade.
The disadvantage of 4:2:2 is it's lossy compression. Upon conversion from 8-bit R'G'B' to 8-bit
Y'CBCR, three-quarters of the available colors are lost. Upon 4:2:2 subsampling, half the color detail is
discarded. But production staff are facing increasing demands for quality, and increasing demands to
integrate video production with film and CGI. The lossy compression of 4:2:2 is becoming a major
disadvantage.
Owing to the enormous computing and storage capacity of general-purpose workstations, it is now
practical to do production directly in R'G'B' (or as it's known in studio video terminology, 4:4:4). To
integrate traditional studio video equipment into the new digital studio, conversion between R'G'B'
and 4:2:2 is necessary.
This paper depends heavily upon graphics, so it is not provided in HTML/GIF format. A
typeset version of the paper is available in Acrobat PDF format (1662989 bytes), at two
alternate sites:
Poynton's site.
Charles - Articles
1998-07-28a
Charles Poynton
Charles Poynton
Momaku
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Charles Poynton
Copyright 2004-03-29
Discreet Logic
10, Rue Duke
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Canada H3C 2L7
Tel: (514) 393-1616
Fax: (514) 393-0110
www.discreet.com
1 of 8
Introduction
Linear light RGB is the native color coding of CGI. In computing, the
gamut of colors comprises the volume bounded by the unit RGB cube:
See Figure 1 opposite. In video and computer graphics, a nonlinear
transfer function is applied to RGB tristimulus signals to give gamma
corrected RGB, often in 8 bits each. See Figure 2, on page 4.
Filtering and subsampling operations that form the 4:2:2 signal remove
chroma detail. If subsampling is accomplished by simply dropping or
averaging alternate CB and CR samples, then filtering artifacts (such as
aliasing) will be introduced. Artifacts can accumulate if filtering is
repeated many times. Subsampling using a sophisticated filter gives
much better results than simply dropping or averaging samples.
However, even sophisticated filters can exhibit fringing on certain color
edges, if conversion between RGB and 4:2:2 is repeated many times.
Loss of color detail makes it more difficult to pull bluescreen or greenscreen mattes from 4:2:2 than from RGB.
Test signals characterize the electrical performance of a video system.
Standard video test signals include elements that are synthesized electronically as sine waves, and injected onto the signal. Many of these
elements have no legitimate RGB representation. Since these signals
can be conveyed through YCBCR without incident, some people claim
YCBCR to have an advantage. However, in my opinion, it is more
important to allocate bits to picture information than to signals that
cannot possibly represent picture information.
In general, YCBCR is optimized for realtime video, at the expense of
more difficult interface with film, CGI, and general-purpose computer
tools. RGB does not exploit chroma subsampling, so it has somewhat
higher data capacity requirements than YCBCR .
G AXIS
+1
Yl
Wt
Gray axis
(R = G = B)
Cy
18% Gray
Mg
+1
IS
AX
B
0
Bk
B AXIS
+1
Computing gamut
STEP (riser)
LEVEL (tread)
0
RGB in video
Studio video RGB standards provide footroom below the black code,
and headroom above the white code. The primary purpose of footroom and headroom is to accommodate the transients that result from
filtering in either the analog or digital domains. Their secondary
purpose is to provide some margin to handle level variations in signals
originated in the analog domain. (Additionally, the headroom provides
a marginal improvement in highlight handling and exposure latitude.)
Wt
Gray axis
(R = G = B)
Cy
G COMPONENT
255
Yl
18% Gray
Mg
R
55
T2
N
NE
MP
CO
R
Bk
B COMPONENT
B
255
254 +238
HEADROOM
INTERFACE
PROCESSING
235 +219
16
-15
FOOTROOM
Eight-bit Rec. 601 coding has an excursion of 219 codes from black to
white. For no good technical reason, footroom and headroom are
assigned asymmetrically: Footroom has 15 levels, but headroom has 19.
An offset of +16 is added at an 8-bit interface. (Hardware engineers
say that black is at code 16, and white is at code 235.) The sketch in
the margin shows abstract levels in bold, and hardware levels in italics.
Interface codes 0 and 255 are reserved for synchronization purposes,
and are prohibited from appearing in video or ancillary data.
The so-called valid colors encompass the volume that is spanned when
each RGB component ranges from reference black to reference white.
In Rec. 601, each component has 219 steps (risers) that is, 220 levels.
That gives 220 220 220, or 10648000 colors: About 64% of the total
volume of codewords is valid.
Linear light RGB is the basis for color representation in film and CGI,
but linear light coding is a poor match to human perception. Greatly
improved results are obtained by using nonlinear RGB coding that
mimics the lightness sensitivity of vision. We can use another more
subtle application of the properties of vision to code video signals:
Vision has poor acuity to color detail, compared to its acuity for lightness. Providing that lightness detail is maintained, color detail can be
discarded. Owing to the nature of the visual system, if subsampling is
done correctly, it will not be noticed. Subsampling has two steps: First,
a lightness component and two color components are formed. Then,
detail is discarded from the two color components.
219
REFERENCE WHITE
Yl
Cy
G
Y AXIS
Mg
IS
AX
R
CR
2
11
-112
0
12
-1
B
112
CB AXIS
REFERENCE BLACK
YCBCR video
To exploit the poor color acuity of vision, luma is formed as a properlyweighted sum of nonlinear R, G, and B. It is standard to use the coefficients of Rec. 601. Two color difference or chroma components
are then formed as blue minus luma and red minus luma, where blue,
red, and luma incorporate gamma correction. (Luma, B--Y, and R--Y
can be formed simultaneously from R, G, and B through a 33 matrix
multiplication.)
601
Y = 0.299 R
+ 0.587 G
+ 0.114 B
Various scale factors, and various notations, are applied to the basic
B--Y and R-Y color differences. The correct scaling and nomenclature for component digital systems is YCBCR (not YUV). The correct
term for the lightness component is luma (not luminance).
If each of the Y, CB, and CR components has 8 bits of precision, then
obviously the entire YCBCR cube has the same number of codewords
as 8-bit RGB. However, it is immediately obvious from the appearance of the transformed RGB unit cube in Figure 3 above that only
a small fraction of the total volume of the YCBCR coordinate space is
occupied by colors! The number of colors accommodated is computed
as the determinant of the transform matrix. In Rec. 601 YCBCR , only
about 1 4 of the Rec. 601 studio video RGB codes are used.
1
220 2252
4
3
220
2784375
10648000
= 0.261
RGB 4:4:4
YCBCR 4:4:4
4:2:2
4:1:1
4:2:0 (JPEG/JFIF,
4:2:0
(Rec. 601)
H.261, MPEG-1)
(MPEG-2 fr)
R0 R1
Y0 Y1
Y0 Y1
Y0 Y1 Y2 Y3
Y0 Y1
Y0 Y1
R2 R3
Y2 Y3
Y2 Y3
Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7
Y2 Y3
Y2 Y3
G0 G1
CB0 CB1
CB01
CB03
G2 G3
CB2 CB3
CB23
CB47
B0 B1
CR0 CR1
CR01
CR03
B2 B3
CR2 CR3
CR23
CR47
CB03
CB03
CR03
CR03
Figure 4 Chroma subsampling. Providing full luma detail is maintained, visions poor color acuity enables color detail to
be reduced by subsampling. A 2 2 array of RGB pixels is matrixed to a luma component Y and color difference
(chroma) components CB and CR . CB and CR are then filtered (averaged). Here, CB and CR samples are drawn wider or
taller than the luma samples to indicate their spatial extent. The horizontal offset of CB and CR is due to cositing. (In
4:2:0 in JPEG/JFIF, MPEG-1, and H.261, chroma samples are sited interstitially, not cosited.)
then transcoded back to RGB, the resulting RGB cannot have any
more than 2.75 million colors!
Izraelevitz, David, and Joshua L.
Koslov, Code Utilization for
Component-coded Digital
Video, in Tomorrows Television, Proceedings of 16th
Annual SMPTE Television
Conference (White Plains, New
York: SMPTE, 1982), 2230.
The color difference components are bipolar. Unscaled, they range from
roughly --1 to +1. For analog engineers, the doubled excursion represents a 6 dB SNR penalty for the chroma components. Digital engineers should consider the sign to consume an extra bit in each of CB
and CR . This codeword utilization issue represents a serious limitation of
8-bit YCBCR performance. It necessitates techniques such as Quantels
patented dynamic rounding.
In addition to this obvious problem of codeword utilization, transforms
between YCBCR and RGB must have carefully-chosen matrix coefficients. If the product of the encoding matrix and the decoding matrix is
not very nearly an identity matrix, then roundoff errors will accumulate
every time an image is transcoded. High-end manufacturers take great
care in choosing these matrix coefficients; however, the entire problem
is circumvented by operating in RGB.
Chroma subsampling
Once color difference components have been formed, they can be
subsampled (filtered). The data compression that results from subsampling is the justification for using YCBCR in the first place! To
subsample by simply dropping samples leads to aliasing, and consequent poor image quality. It is necessary to perform some sort of averaging operation. The various subsampling schemes in use are sketched
in Figure 4 above.
Some systems implement 4:2:0 subsampling with minimum computation by simply averaging CB over a 22 block, and averaging CR over
the same 22 block. Simple averaging causes subsampled chroma to
take an effective position centered among a 22 block of luma
4
4
4
4
4
4
samples, what I call interstitial siting. Low-end decoders simply replicate the subsampled 4:2:0 CB and CR to obtain the missing chroma
samples, prior to conversion back to RGB. This technique, sketched in
Figure 6 in the margin, is used in JPEG/JFIF stillframes in computing,
MPEG-1, and ITU-R Rec. H.261 videoconferencing.
Simple averaging causes subsampled chroma to take an effective position halfway between two luma samples, what I call interstitial siting.
This approach is inconsistent with standards for studio video and
MPEG-2, where CB and CR are cosited horizontally.
Weights of [ 1 4 , 1 2 , 1 4 ] can be used to achieve horizontal cositing as
required by Rec. 601, while still using simple computation, as sketched
at the top of Figure 7 in the margin. A [ 1 4 , 1 2 , 1 4 ] filter can be
combined with [ 1 2 , 1 2 ] vertical averaging, so as to be extended to
4:2:0 used in MPEG-2, as sketched at the bottom of Figure 7.
8
1
8
Y = 0.2126 R
+ 0.7122G
+ 0.0722 B
0
64 720
601YC C
B R
48
19
SDTV
709YC C
B R
10
80
HDTV
20
Practical suggestions
To maximize performance at the interface of computing and video,
I recommend that you take these steps:
Acquire RGB 4:4:4 images wherever possible, instead of acquiring
images already subjected to the YCBCR transform and 4:2:2 subsampling. For realtime transfer, use the dual SDI link.
Stay in RGB if your production situation permits. The first conversion
to YCBCR will cause an unrecoverable loss of 75% of the available
RGB codewords, and the first subsampling to 4:2:2 will cause an
unrecoverable loss of half the color detail.
Avoid repeated conversions back and forth between RGB and 4:2:2.
Conversions after the first are liable to accumulate rounding errors, and
are liable to accumulate filtering artifacts such as aliasing.
Retain intermediates in RGB 4:4:4 format where possible. Use DLT or
Exabyte computer media, instead of videotape. Where intermediate or
archival work must be recorded on video equipment, use 10-bit D-5
recording, instead of 8-bit D-1.
Minimize resampling. To the extent possible, avoid changing from one
sample structure to another for example, from square sampling to
nonsquare, or from nonsquare to square.
Establish and maintain accurate black levels. Establish the correct black
level for a scene or an element upon entry to the digital domain. When
possible, perform this adjustment using video playback equipment.
(Establishing and maintaining white level is not quite so important.)
Abstract
Since 1953, we have been using the wrong block diagram for color video! The principles of color
science dictate that we mix linear RGB to make true luminance, denoted Y. This is known as the
Principle of Constant Luminance. But in video we depart from that principle, and implement an
engineering approximation: We mix nonlinear ("gamma corrected") R'G'B' to make what I call luma,
denoted Y'. (Many video engineers carelessly call this luminance.) To form luma, we use the
theoretical coefficients of color science, but we use them in the wrong block diagram: We apply
gamma correction before the mixing, instead of after. This alteration in the block diagram is more or
less inconsequential in practice, though the departure from theory is apparent in the dark band seen
between the green and magenta color bars of the standard video test pattern.
The Rec. 709 HDTV standard has, wrongly in my opinion, adopted a new set of luma coefficients.
There is an incremental benefit in using the "right" coefficients, even in the wrong block diagram. The
change would be sensible if HDTV was a closed system. But changing the coefficients introduces a
second flavor of Y'CBCR - effectively, there is now one flavor of Y'CBCR for small pictures (SDTV),
and a different flavor of Y'CBCR for big pictures (HDTV).
HDTV originated in the studio will be downconverted to SDTV for simulcast. Consumer ATV
receivers will display conventional video sources through upconversion. Even studios are likely to use
upconversion, to allow the conventional studio equipment as a cheap way to originate "HDTV" in the
early phases of deployment. No studio upconverters or downconverters today do the necessary
processing to accommodate the different flavors of luma coefficients - instead, production personnel
are faced with having to perform manual colour correction. In consumer equipment, it seems highly
unlikely that the correction will ever be properly implemented in hardware or software: It is
impractical to perform a 3 x 3 matrix multiplication for every pixel, especially when the DCT of the
decompression requires only 3 multiplies per pixel! Instead, the consumer will be faced with poor
colour reproduction.
The computer and communications industries find it hard to understand why color coding parameters
should change as a function of image size. The different flavor means that it is impossible to cut and
paste Y'CBCR data from a big image to a little one.
The MPEG-2 standard provides, in its data stream, an indication of the luma coefficient set (flavor)
used in encoding. I advocate adoption of a recommended practice for ATV that calls for the use of
http://www.poynton.com/papers/SMPTE_98_YYZ_Luma/index.html (1 di 2) [15/01/2005 16:33:27]
Rec. 601 luma coefficients - in other words, that HDTV, ATV, and DTV use the same flavor of luma
coefficients that have been used since 1953. This will aid the transition to high definition, ATV, and
DTV, by delivering the high colour quality that studio engineers, program producers, and consumers
expect.
No printed version of this paper is available at the moment, though I plan to write it up eventually and
submit it for publication. An audiotape recording of the conference presentation is available from
SMPTE.
See also, Constant Luminance.
Charles Poynton - Video engineering
1998-03-26
Constant Luminance
Constant Luminance
Since 1953, we have been using a block diagram for color video that is different from the one that a
color scientist would prefer to use. The principles of color science dictate that we mix linear RGB
(tristimulus signals) to make true luminance, denoted Y. If a video system were to operate in this way,
it would adhere to the Principle of Constant Luminance. But in video we depart from that principle,
and implement an engineering approximation: We mix nonlinear ("gamma corrected") RGB to make
what I call luma, denoted Y'. (Many video engineers carelessly call this luminance.) To form luma, we
use the coefficients that a color scientist would use to form luminance, but we use them in a different
block diagram than the color scientist expects: We apply gamma correction before the mixing, instead
of after. This alteration in the block diagram introduces a few image artifacts that are usually fairly
minor. The departure from the theoretically correct order of operations is apparent in the dark band
seen between the green and magenta color bars of the standard video test pattern.
Details are available in Chapter 8 of Digital Video and HDTV Algorithms and Interfaces.
The issue of constant luminance (or lack of it) is intimately intertwined with gamma correction.
Gamma has unjustifiably acquired a bad reputation. I presented a paper on the topic, The
rehabilitation of gamma, at a SPIE/IS&T conference in 1998.That paper outlines the Principle of
Constant Luminance. As you can deduce from its title, that paper concentrates on the reproduction of
lightness (which is related to luminance, which is related to luma). It merely outlines the color issues.
I presented the related issue of choosing luma coefficients for conventional video, DTV, ATV, and
HDTV, in a SMPTE paper in 1998: Luminance, luma, and the migration to DTV. The so-called paper
is virtual at this moment, having not been actually finished in that medium! However, the abstract of
the presentation is available:
For the truly courageous, an audiotape of the session is available through SMPTE. The opening
paragraph of this note is the first paragraph of that paper's abstract.
Some fragments of the paper-in-progress are available. Start with the brief technical note Errors due to
nonconstant luminance. If you STILL want to keep going, access the links at the bottom of that page.
All of this will be tied together within a month or two, and then (eventually) released as the written
version of the SMPTE paper.
Related documents, typeset, available in Acrobat PDF format:
Constant Luminance
The magnitude of nonconstant luminance errors (Acrobat PDF format, 89246 bytes)
Transforms between luma coefficient sets (Acrobat PDF format, 87907 bytes)
No browsing!
Sorry, no browsing!
communications.
The Table of Contents is available. Errata are available.
Sample chapters will soon be available here.
You can order from the publisher, or Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.
This book was to been published by Wiley as Digital Video and HDTV: Pixels, Pictures, and
Perception, but the title and publisher have changed. (Why?)
2003-02-14
Charles Poynton
Contents
Foreword by Jim Blinn
Foreword by Mark Schubin
List of figures
List of tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part 1 - Introduction
1 - Raster images
2 - Quantization
3 - Brightness and contrast controls
4 - Raster images in computing
5 - Image structure
6 - Raster scanning
http://www.poynton.com/notes/DVAI/DVAI_TOC.html (1 di 5) [15/01/2005 16:33:39]
7 - Resolution
8 - Constant luminance
9 - Rendering intent
10 - Introduction to luma and chroma
11 - Introduction to component SDTV
12 - Introduction to composite NTSC and PAL
13 - Introduction to HDTV
14 - Introduction to video compression
15 - Digital video interfaces
Part 2 - Principles
16 - Filtering and sampling
17 - Resampling, interpolation, and decimation
18 - Image digitization and reconstruction
19 - Perception and visual acuity
20 - Luminance and lightness
21 - The CIE system of colorimetry
22 - Color science for video
23 - Gamma
http://www.poynton.com/notes/DVAI/DVAI_TOC.html (2 di 5) [15/01/2005 16:33:39]
Appendices
A - YUV and luminance considered harmful
B - Introduction to radiometry & photometry
Glossary of video signal terms
Index
2002-11-06
DVAI
Contents
Foreword by Jim Blinn
Foreword by Mark Schubin
List of figures
List of tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part 1 - Introduction
1 - Raster images
Imaging
Aspect ratio
Digitization
Pixel array
Visual acuity
Viewing distance and angle
Spatiotemporal domains
Lightness terminology
Nonlinear image coding
Linear and nonlinear
Luma and color difference components
SDTV/HDTV
2 - Quantization
Decibels
Noise, signal, sensitivity
Quantization error
Linearity
Perceptual uniformity
Headroom and footroom
5 - Image structure
Image reconstruction
Sampling aperture
Spot profile
Box distribution
Gaussian distribution
6 - Raster scanning
Motion portrayal
Segmented frame (24PsF)
Video system taxonomy
Conversion among systems
7 - Resolution
8 - Constant luminance
9 - Rendering intent
Surround effect
Tone scale alteration
Incorporation of rendering intent
Rendering intent in desktop computing
Luma
Sloppy use of the term luminance
Color difference coding (chroma)
Chroma subsampling
Chroma subsampling notation
Chroma subsampling filters
Chroma in composite NTSC and PAL
Scanning standards
Widescreen (16:9) SDTV
Progressive SDTV (480p/483p)
13 - Introduction to HDTV
Data compression
Image compression
Lossy compression
JPEG
Motion-JPEG
MPEG
Picture coding types (I, P, B)
Reordering
MPEG-1
MPEG-2
Part 2 - Principles
16 - Filtering and sampling
Sampling theorem
Sampling at exactly 0.5fS
Magnitude frequency response
Magnitude frequency response of a boxcar
The sinc weighting function
Frequency response of point sampling
Fourier transform pairs
Analog filters
Digital filters
Impulse response
Finite impulse response (FIR) filters
Physical realizability of a filter
Phase response (group delay)
Infinite impulse response (IIR) filters
Lowpass filter
Digital filter design
Reconstruction
Reconstruction close to 0.5fS
(sin x)/x correction
Further reading
2:1 downsampling
Oversampling
Interpolation
Lagrange interpolation
Lagrange interpolation as filtering
Polyphase interpolators
Polyphase taps and phases
Implementing polyphase interpolators
Decimation
Lowpass filtering in decimation
Retina
Adaptation
Contrast ratio
Contrast sensitivity
Contrast sensitivity function (CSF)
Radiance, intensity
Luminance
Relative luminance
Luminance from red, green, and blue
Lightness (CIE L*)
Fundamentals of vision
Definitions
Spectral power distribution (SPD) and tristimulus
Scanner spectral constraints
CIE XYZ tristimulus
CIE [x, y] chromaticity
Blackbody radiation
Color temperature
White
Perceptually uniform color spaces
CIE L*u*v*
CIE L*a*b*
CIE L*u*v* and CIE L*a*b* summary
Color specification
Color image coding
Further reading
23 - Gamma
Color acuity
RGB and R'G'B' color cubes
Conventional luma/color difference coding
Luminance and luma notation
Nonlinear red, green, blue (R'G'B')
Transition samples
Edge treatment
Picture lines
Choice of SAL and SPW parameters
Video levels
Setup (pedestal)
Rec. 601 to computing
Enhancement
Median filtering
Coring
Chroma transition improvement (CTI)
UV components
NTSC chroma modulation
NTSC chroma demodulation
PAL chroma modulation
Subcarrier regeneration
S-video interface
Decoder controls
Notch filtering
Frequency interleaving in NTSC
Cross-luma and cross-color
Frequency interleaving in PAL
Spatial frequency spectra of NTSC
Spatial frequency spectra of PAL
One-dimensional frequency spectrum of NTSC
One-dimensional frequency spectrum of PAL
Narrowband Q
IQ components
Y'IQ encoding
Field rate
Line rate
Sound subcarrier
Addition of composite color
NTSC color subcarrier
576i PAL color subcarrier
4fSC sampling
Common sampling rate
Numerology of HDTV scanning
Audio rates
32 - Timecode
Introduction
Dropframe timecode
Editing
Linear timecode (LTC)
Vertical interval timecode (VITC)
Timecode structure
Further reading
Analog sync
Odd/even, first/second, top/bottom
Sync distribution
Genlock
Analog horizontal blanking interval
Sync separation
Component analog levels
Composite analog levels
Analog electrical interface
Analog mechanical interface
S-video electrical and mechanical interface
35 - Videotape recording
Playback in shuttle
Recording
Playback
Editing
Digital VTRs
Timebase error
Channel coding
36 - 2-3 pulldown
37 - Deinterlacing
Spatial domain
Vertical-temporal domain
Motion adaptivity
39 - DV compression
DV chroma subsampling
DV frame/field modes
Picture-in-shuttle in DV
DV overflow scheme
DV quantization
Consumer DV variants - SD, LP, SDL, HD
Professional DV variants
DV digital interface (DIF)
Sony Digital Betacam compression
Sony Betacam SX compression
D-5 HD compression
D-11 (HDCAM) compression
Frame rate
Interlace
Line sync
Field/frame sync
RGB primary components
Nonlinear transfer function
Luma (Y')
Picture center, aspect ratio, and blanking
Halfline blanking
Component digital 4:2:2 interface
Subcarrier
NTSC two-frame sequence
NTSC burst
Color differences (U, V)
Color difference filtering
Chroma (C)
Setup
S-video-525 (Y'/C3.58)
Composite NTSC encoding
Composite digital NTSC interface (4fSC)
Composite analog NTSC interface
Frame rate
Interlace
Line sync
Analog field/frame sync
RGB primary components
Nonlinear transfer function
Luma (Y')
Picture center, aspect ratio, and blanking
Component digital 4:2:2 interface
Component analog R'G'B' interface
Component analog Y'PBPR interface
Subcarrier
PAL four-frame sequence
PAL burst
Color difference components (U, V)
Color difference filtering
Chroma (C)
S-video-625 (Y'/C4.43)
Composite PAL encoding
Composite digital PAL interface (4fSC)
Composite analog PAL interface
Colorbars
Colorbar notation
Frequency response
Differential gain (DG)
Differential phase (DP)
Pulse signals
Modulated 12.5T, 20T pulses
Scanning
Analog sync
Picture center, aspect ratio, and blanking
RGB primary components
Nonlinear transfer function
Luma (Y')
Component digital 4:2:2 interface
Component analog R'G'B' interface
Component analog Y'PBPR interface
Pre- and postfiltering characteristics
Scanning
Analog sync
Picture center, aspect ratio, and blanking
Relationship to SMPTE 240M (1035i) scanning
RGB primary components
Nonlinear transfer function
Luma (Y' )
Component digital 4:2:2 interface
Component analog R'G'B' interface
Component analog Y'PBPR interface
Pre- and postfiltering characteristics
Japan
United States
ATSC modulation
Europe
Further reading
Appendices
A - YUV and luminance considered harmful
Radiometry
Photometry
Image science
Units
Further reading
2002-11-06
DVAI
Contents
Foreword by Jim Blinn
Foreword by Mark Schubin
List of figures
List of tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part 1 - Introduction
1 - Raster images
2 - Quantization
3 - Brightness and contrast controls
4 - Raster images in computing
5 - Image structure
6 - Raster scanning
http://www.poynton.com/DVAI/DVAI_TOC.html (1 di 5) [15/01/2005 16:34:06]
7 - Resolution
8 - Constant luminance
9 - Rendering intent
10 - Introduction to luma and chroma
11 - Introduction to component SDTV
12 - Introduction to composite NTSC and PAL
13 - Introduction to HDTV
14 - Introduction to video compression
15 - Digital video interfaces
Part 2 - Principles
16 - Filtering and sampling
17 - Resampling, interpolation, and decimation
18 - Image digitization and reconstruction
19 - Perception and visual acuity
20 - Luminance and lightness
21 - The CIE system of colorimetry
22 - Color science for video
23 - Gamma
Appendices
A - YUV and luminance considered harmful
B - Introduction to radiometry & photometry
Glossary of video signal terms
Index
2003-09-25
DVAI
Contents
Foreword by Jim Blinn
Foreword by Mark Schubin
List of figures
List of tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part 1 - Introduction
1 - Raster images
Imaging
Aspect ratio
Digitization
Pixel array
Visual acuity
Viewing distance and angle
Spatiotemporal domains
Lightness terminology
Nonlinear image coding
Linear and nonlinear
Luma and color difference components
SDTV/HDTV
2 - Quantization
Decibels
Noise, signal, sensitivity
Quantization error
Linearity
Perceptual uniformity
Headroom and footroom
5 - Image structure
Image reconstruction
Sampling aperture
Spot profile
Box distribution
Gaussian distribution
6 - Raster scanning
7 - Resolution
8 - Constant luminance
9 - Rendering intent
Surround effect
Tone scale alteration
Incorporation of rendering intent
Rendering intent in desktop computing
Luma
Sloppy use of the term luminance
Color difference coding (chroma)
Chroma subsampling
Chroma subsampling notation
Chroma subsampling filters
Chroma in composite NTSC and PAL
Scanning standards
Widescreen (16:9) SDTV
Progressive SDTV (480p/483p)
Square and nonsquare sampling
Resampling
13 - Introduction to HDTV
Data compression
Image compression
Lossy compression
JPEG
Motion-JPEG
MPEG
Picture coding types (I, P, B)
Reordering
MPEG-1
MPEG-2
Part 2 - Principles
16 - Filtering and sampling
Sampling theorem
Sampling at exactly 0.5fS
Magnitude frequency response
Magnitude frequency response of a boxcar
The sinc weighting function
Frequency response of point sampling
Fourier transform pairs
Analog filters
Digital filters
Impulse response
Finite impulse response (FIR) filters
Physical realizability of a filter
Phase response (group delay)
Infinite impulse response (IIR) filters
Lowpass filter
Digital filter design
Reconstruction
Reconstruction close to 0.5fS
(sin x)/x correction
Further reading
2:1 downsampling
Oversampling
Interpolation
Lagrange interpolation
Lagrange interpolation as filtering
Polyphase interpolators
Polyphase taps and phases
Implementing polyphase interpolators
Decimation
Lowpass filtering in decimation
Retina
Adaptation
Contrast ratio
Contrast sensitivity
Contrast sensitivity function (CSF)
Radiance, intensity
Luminance
Relative luminance
Luminance from red, green, and blue
Lightness (CIE L*)
Fundamentals of vision
Definitions
Spectral power distribution (SPD) and tristimulus
Scanner spectral constraints
CIE XYZ tristimulus
CIE [x, y] chromaticity
Blackbody radiation
Color temperature
White
Perceptually uniform color spaces
CIE L*u*v*
CIE L*a*b*
CIE L*u*v* and CIE L*a*b* summary
Color specification
Color image coding
Further reading
23 - Gamma
Color acuity
RGB and R'G'B' color cubes
Conventional luma/color difference coding
Luminance and luma notation
Nonlinear red, green, blue (R'G'B')
Rec. 601 luma
Rec. 709 luma
SMPTE 240M-1988 luma
Transition samples
Edge treatment
Picture lines
Choice of SAL and SPW parameters
Video levels
Setup (pedestal)
Rec. 601 to computing
Enhancement
Median filtering
Coring
Chroma transition improvement (CTI)
Scan-velocity modulation (SVM)
Mixing and keying
UV components
NTSC chroma modulation
NTSC chroma demodulation
PAL chroma modulation
Subcarrier regeneration
S-video interface
Decoder controls
Notch filtering
Frequency interleaving in NTSC
Cross-luma and cross-color
Frequency interleaving in PAL
Spatial frequency spectra of NTSC
Spatial frequency spectra of PAL
One-dimensional frequency spectrum of NTSC
One-dimensional frequency spectrum of PAL
Narrowband Q
IQ components
Y'IQ encoding
Field rate
Line rate
Sound subcarrier
Addition of composite color
NTSC color subcarrier
576i PAL color subcarrier
4fSC sampling
Common sampling rate
Numerology of HDTV scanning
Audio rates
32 - Timecode
Introduction
Dropframe timecode
Editing
Linear timecode (LTC)
Vertical interval timecode (VITC)
Timecode structure
Further reading
Analog sync
Odd/even, first/second, top/bottom
Sync distribution
Genlock
Analog horizontal blanking interval
Sync separation
Component analog levels
Composite analog levels
Analog electrical interface
Analog mechanical interface
S-video electrical and mechanical interface
35 - Videotape recording
Playback in shuttle
Recording
Playback
Editing
Digital VTRs
Timebase error
Channel coding
Analog VTR signal processing
Analog videotape formats
Digital VTR signal processing
36 - 2-3 pulldown
37 - Deinterlacing
Spatial domain
Vertical-temporal domain
Motion adaptivity
39 - DV compression
DV chroma subsampling
DV frame/field modes
Picture-in-shuttle in DV
DV overflow scheme
DV quantization
Consumer DV variants - SD, LP, SDL, HD
Professional DV variants
DV digital interface (DIF)
Sony Digital Betacam compression
Sony Betacam SX compression
D-5 HD compression
D-11 (HDCAM) compression
Frame rate
Interlace
Line sync
Field/frame sync
RGB primary components
Nonlinear transfer function
Luma (Y')
Picture center, aspect ratio, and blanking
Halfline blanking
Component digital 4:2:2 interface
Component analog R'G'B' interface
Component analog Y'PBPR interface, EBU N10
Component analog Y'PBPR interface, industry standard
Subcarrier
NTSC two-frame sequence
NTSC burst
Color differences (U, V)
Color difference filtering
Chroma (C)
Setup
S-video-525 (Y'/C3.58)
Composite NTSC encoding
Composite digital NTSC interface (4fSC)
Composite analog NTSC interface
Frame rate
Interlace
Line sync
Analog field/frame sync
RGB primary components
Nonlinear transfer function
Luma (Y')
Picture center, aspect ratio, and blanking
Component digital 4:2:2 interface
Component analog R'G'B' interface
Component analog Y'PBPR interface
Subcarrier
PAL four-frame sequence
PAL burst
Color difference components (U, V)
Color difference filtering
Chroma (C)
S-video-625 (Y'/C4.43)
Composite PAL encoding
Composite digital PAL interface (4fSC)
Composite analog PAL interface
Colorbars
Colorbar notation
Frequency response
Differential gain (DG)
Differential phase (DP)
Pulse signals
Modulated 12.5T, 20T pulses
Scanning
Analog sync
Picture center, aspect ratio, and blanking
RGB primary components
Nonlinear transfer function
Luma (Y')
Component digital 4:2:2 interface
Component analog R'G'B' interface
Component analog Y'PBPR interface
Pre- and postfiltering characteristics
Scanning
Analog sync
Picture center, aspect ratio, and blanking
Relationship to SMPTE 240M (1035i) scanning
RGB primary components
Nonlinear transfer function
Luma (Y' )
Component digital 4:2:2 interface
Component analog R'G'B' interface
Component analog Y'PBPR interface
Pre- and postfiltering characteristics
B,G,H,I/PAL (PAL)
Audio in PAL
PAL-M, PAL-N
SECAM
Multiplexed analog components (MAC)
Summary of parameters
Japan
United States
ATSC modulation
Europe
Further reading
Appendices
A - YUV and luminance considered harmful
Radiometry
Photometry
Image science
Units
Further reading
2003-09-25
DVAI
Errata
This page gives you access to the errata for the book, in typographic-quality Acrobat PDF format,
including replacement figures.
The book is currently in its third printing. To determine which printing of the book you have, turn to
the copyright page of the front matter, page iv, and examine the line commencing 2007 2006 ...: The
rightmost digit of that line indicates which printing you have.
Printing
Updated
2004-10-19
2, 3
2004-10-19
The fourth printing hasn't been printed yet! If you see one, or if you suspect an error in the book or in
any Errata document, please inform me by email e-mail.
Charles Poynton - Digital Video and HDTV Algorithms and Interfaces
2005-01-11
Charles Poynton
www.poynton.com
poynton @ poynton.com
www.poynton.com/DVAI/errata
I revise this note as I discover errors, and I tag each entry with the
date it was posted. Prior to your making these corrections, I suggest
that you check to see if a more recent Errata document has been
posted. When you make the corrections herein, I suggest that you
annotate, on the copyright page of your book, the Errata revision date
that you find at the bottom of this page. Then when you check future
revisions of this Errata document, you can easily identify any additional corrections that need to be made.
In the entries below, I acknowledge individuals who have reported
errors. Entries without attribution are mine, except that numerous
corrections dated 2002-09-22 are thanks to Eric Garci, and several
corrections dated 2002-09-23 are thanks to Alain Fontaine.
2003-02-14: Page xlii of the front matter. Halfway into the second
paragraph, correct Nelson to Nelsen. Sorry, Don!
2003-09-22: Page 7, Figure 1.7. Change PC/Mac VGA to
PC/Mac SVGA.
1 of 10
116 Y ;
12 Yn
L* =
1
Y 3
116 16;
Yn
Y 24
Yn 116
Eq 20.2
24
Y
116 < Y
2004-08-22: Page 209. In the second line of the first full paragraph of
the page, change 0.008856 or less to (24116)3 or less, that is, less
than about 0.008856.
_
_
_
2004-08-22: Page 216. Historically, the notation x(), y(), and z()
was used for color matching functions. In the book, I used the notation X(), Y(), and Z() that was under consideration by the CIE at
the time
_ the_ book was
_ being written. Ultimately the CIE decided to
retain x(), y(), and z(). In the bottom paragraph of page 216, in the
middle marginal note on that page, in Figure 21.4, in several places on
page 217, and in the caption paragraph
to Figure
21.5 on page 218,
_
_
_
change X(), Y(), and Z() to x(), y(), and z() respectively.
116 Y ;
12 Yn
L* =
1
Y 3
116 16;
Yn
Y 24
Yn 116
Eq 21.3
24
Y
116 < Y
841
16
t+
108
116
2004-10-19: Page 231. In the the first paragraph under the heading
Further reading, and in the first marginal note, change Styles to Stiles.
Thanks to Xingbo Wang.
2003-09-23: Page 250. In second line of the paragraph under
Equation 22.6, replace rows with columns.
2003-02-14: Page 262. In the marginal note at the top of the page,
replace the first D by E .
2003-12-16: Page 266, In Equation 23.7, append the digit 5 to the
end of the range of applicability of the first line of the equation: The
range should read -0.25 L < -0.0045.
2003-09-24: Page 291. In the second line of Equation 24.5, replace
two instances of R with G; in the third line, replace two instances of R
with B. Thanks to Lindsay Steele.
Eq 25.12
601Y '
76.245 149.685
29.07 255 R'
255
1
CB =
43.366 85.136 128.502 255 G'
256
Eq 26.9
219G
219B
256
1
256
256
256
0
46.885
464.430
394.150
117.165
0
709
219Y
CB
CR
16
128
128
Eq 26.10
709 Y 16
15.874 255 R
46.742 157.243
219
1
=
128
C
+
25
.
765
86
.
674
112
.439 255 G
B
256
C 128
112.439 102.129 10.310 255 B
CR
0
0
0.099312
0.191700 709
219Y '
0.989854 0.110653 CB
0.072453
0.983398 CR
Eq 26.12
CR
0
0
601
0.115550 0.207938 219
Y'
1.018640
0.114618 CB
0.075049
1.025327 CR
Eq 26.13
2003-09-24: Page 440. The first word of the caption to Figure 37.12
should read Intrafield. If youre a stickler for detail, change the List of
Figures (page xxxii) accordingly. Thanks to David Salotti.
2003-09-24: Page 442. Figure 37.15 mistakenly has three stages
instead of four; a replacement figure is provided on page 9 of this
document. In the third line of the top paragraph of the page, replace
three by four in two places. Thanks to Mike O'Connell and Billy Biggs.
2003-09-23: Page 448. In the caption to Figure 38.1, replace a luma
block with four luma blocks.
2003-02-14: Page 448, third line from bottom. Insert of betwen array
and the spatial.
2003-10-15: Page 462. Replace the middle paragraph and the associated marginal note with this:
SMPTE 314M defines DV25 and
DV50 for studio use. The Blue Book,
and IEC standards, use the word
decimated instead of discarded.
IEC 61834-1, cited in the margin of
page 422, prescribes the subsampling schemes for consumer DV.
2004-05-07: Page 601. In the first line of the caption of Table B.1,
change In radiometry to In photometry. Thanks to Xingbo Wang.
Replacement figures
4:4:4
RGB
R0 R1
4:4:4
YCBCR
Y0 Y1
4:2:2
4:1:1
4:2:0 JPEG/JFIF,
4:2:0
4:2:0
Rec. 601
H.261, MPEG-1
MPEG-2 fr
576i cons. DV
Y0 Y1
Y0 Y1 Y2 Y3
Y0 Y1
Y0 Y1
Y0 Y1
R2 R3
Y2 Y3
Y2 Y3
Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7
Y2 Y3
Y2 Y3
Y2 Y3
G0 G1
CB0 CB1
CB01
CB03
G2 G3
CB2 CB3
CB23
CB47
B0 B1
CR0 CR1
CR01
CR03
B2 B3
CR2 CR3
CR23
CR47
CB03
CB03
CR03
CR03
CR
CB
Figure 10.1 Chroma subsampling. A 22 array of RGB pixels is matrixed into a luma component Y and two color difference components CB and CR . Color detail is reduced by subsampling CB
and CR ; providing full luma detail is maintained, no degradation is perceptible. In this sketch,
samples are shaded to indicate their spatial position and extent. In 4:2:2, in 4:1:1, and in 4:2:0
used in MPEG-2, CB and CR are cosited (positioned horizontally coincident with a luma sample). In
4:2:0 used in JPEG/JFIF, H.261, and MPEG-1, CB and CR are sited interstitially (midway between
luma samples). In the 4:2:0 variant used in consumer 576i DV, CB and CR are vertically sited in
line-alternate fashion in each field (starting with a CR sample sited over the top left luma sample.)
4:2:0 DV
interlaced
CY Y Y Y CY Y Y Y
CY Y Y Y CY Y Y Y
100
10
100 m
10 m
1m
1k
TWILIGHT SUNLIGHT
STARLIGHT
10 k
MOONLIGHT
Absolute scene
luminance, cd m-2
100
4:1:1 DV
interlaced
IN
OUT
560
(bottom)
1123
(bottom)
1121
562
1124
22H
20H
5H
0V
563
564
565
566
23H
201 2H
6H
5H
567
568
569
8 ...
8 ...
1125
1122 ...1125
45H
41H
5H
0V
20
41
583
21
584
top
image
row
42
top
image
row
560
561
1124
562
1125
1122 ...1125
bottom
image
row
1121
22 ...
43 ...
bottom
image
row
10
ERRATA TO DIGITAL VIDEO AND HDTV ALGORITHMS AND INTERFACES