Inter Coding for Professional HDTV Recording on a D1 VCR

The problem of HDTV digital recording is to find a tradeoff between reliability, low cost, recording time and operational capabilities without prejudice to picture quality. A promising solution is to consider the use of bit rate reduction techniques to compress the amount of data to be put on the tape, while preserving the integrity of the original information. Such an approach is discussed in this paper. Based on techniques used for bit rate reduced contribution link, a system for recording HDTV signals on a D1 machine is described. It consists of a motion compensated DCT coding scheme with an intra refresh period and a fixed bit rate per period. This method satisfies the studio requirements such as the picture quality and the operational capabilities (cut editing, slow motion and shuttle speeds). Moreover, this type of machine may be used in broadcast facilities for the recording and playback of movies, television programs, source material and other software. Additionally, the small size of the cassettes and the long recording time, make it ideal for archival storing of programs and other materials.