Importance

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Abstract

Conventional composite color video signals are re-formatted into a compressed serial format on a line-by-line basis, by sampling the luminance and chrominance components at a predetermined sampling rate and serially arranging the sampled components on a line-by-line basis to form compressed re-formatted video lines, each containing a pair of serially arranged groups of samples, one of the pair of groups containing luminance samples, the other of the pair of groups containing chrominance samples, the groups being compressed in accordance with a predetermined ratio. The separated luminance and chrominance components of the original video signals are sampled at first and second frequencies f1 and f2, which are related by the expression f2=f1/N where N is the predetermined ratio. The luminance and chrominance samples are stored in a storage device at the first and second clock frequencies, respectively, and are serially arranged by reading the samples from the storage device with a third clock signal f3 having a higher frequency than the other two signal frequencies, one of the two groups of samples being read out in its entirety, followed by a reading out of the other group of samples in its entirety. The luminance signal is compressed by a factor f3/f1, and the chrominance signal is compressed by a factor of N.times.f3/fl. To optimize the recovery of the chrominance information during the reconverting phase, a 'mezzanine' signal is inserted in each re-formatted video line during the re-formatting phase in the gap between the luminance component and the chrominance component.

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First Claim