
Bt864A/865A
3.0 PC Board Considerations
YCrCb to NTSC/PAL Digital Video Encoder
3.5 Applications Information
100138B
Conexant
3-9
3.5.6 Luminance Delay on CVBS/B
Postfiltering of the video signal can introduce a variable delay between the lower
frequency luminance components and the higher frequency chrominance
subcarrier components. The group delay distortion is often specified in system as
chroma-luma delay inequality or as Sinx/x pulse group delay. Group delay
distortion is commonly induced by postfilters which peak the chrominance level,
by trap circuits intended to reduce video energy in the aural subcarrier frequency
range, and by Vestigial Sideband (VSB) filtering in RF tuners. Since
oversampling encoders greatly reduce the need for peaking filters, delay
compensation of the luminance signal largely benefits the channel through the RF
modulation and tuner path where group delay distortion can amount to several
hundred nanoseconds or several pixels of misregistration.
While flat group delay correction as observed from a Sinx/x pulse spectrum
can require several LC stages with active buffers, a simplified approach where
only luma-chroma delay must be equalized is to shift the luminance signal
through pipeline delays to match any additional group delay induced on the
chrominance components by postfiltering. This alignment of the lower frequency
luminance components with the chrominance components does not strictly satisfy
broadcast quality requirements but provides perceptible improvements in display
registration.
While VSB delays are prescribed in ITU-R BT.470-3 as about 170 ns, the
luminance delay compensation for postfilter aural traps depends on the
attenuation required at the aural carrier frequency. In the case of NTSC signals
sampled at CCIR601 resolution, the coincidence of the aural carrier (4.5 MHz) at
one third of the sample rate means that any video component which transitions at
intervals of every third pixel clock can generate significant energy at the aural
carrier frequency. In the case of hard-edged, unblended characters having a font
cell size which is a multiple of three pixels, harmonic energy at the aural carrier
frequency may be only 15 dB below the maximum video level, or roughly equal
to the power of the sound subcarrier in the RF spectrum.
Trap attenuation of about 20 dB can assure that the resultant interference with
the FM aural signal will degrade the noise level at the monaural decoded receiver
about 1 dB (
–
44 dB range) with less than 50 ns additional chroma delay
[Multichannel stereo (e.g.,BTSC) or Second Audio Program (SAP) encoder may
require greater attenuation due to lower level subcarriers]. Therefore, luminance
delay compensation of about 225 ns on just the RF feed (e.g. CVBS/B) can
correct for the chroma delay artifacts of additional processing in the RF channel
without compromising the inherently low group delay distortion of the baseband
channels (e.g. CVBS/Y/C).