Video Demystified: A Handbook for the Digital Engineer

Video Demystified is a good name for this text, because when you are done reading this book, you won't have any questions about anything relating to video. You'll clearly understand everything about your TV set also. How the contrast control works; how the picture is drawn on the screen; what the signals running through the cables look like, etc. And I don't just mean know them... I mean "know them". And if you feel like you need to suddenly need to build a TV set from spare parts at Radio Shack, you certainly will want to order this book and have it handy.

But I have to say, be prepared for a headache by page 300. This book isn't light reading and after a while it becomes rather redundant in areas. It's almost more of a reference manual in some ways actually.

Additionally, be warned that the author jumps right into things head first assuming you already know quite a bit about the basics of video signals already. There's no warm and fuzzy "get you up to speed" intro section in this book, so you better have a clear understanding of video signals and hardware (not to mention some background in bitmap images) before you start. When I first picked up this book to start reading it, I got a good idea of how my little sister must have felt when she realized she had accidently taken my HP 16C calculator (instead of a normal calculator) to school to help her on her math exam in 9th grade :-)

So when it comes to this book, either you are in or you are out. A lot of the text discusses specifics of different video standards - almost to the point of putting you into a coma. In other cases, when the book could have used very simple diagrams or analogies, things are diagramed out using hardware related logic diagrams. Great for someone that is use to dealing with A-to-D converters, but I pity the fool that tries to read this book for information on how to put streaming video on his website :-)

In my view, this book is best targeted to those who want to build video signal interpretation hardware devices and/or those who are working with hardware and need to understand the very root level signals involved in handling and representing video. The text also has some limited application in understanding lower level video conversion principles (such as a reference for writing RGB --> YCC algorithms) but not too much. Best for how Analog signals are turned into Digital signals really. But again, unless you are really looking to understand how chips in your CRT or Television are working, then I'd be a little careful with this book.

Not a book for the non-technical, hardware-faint-of-heart types nor for those on a quest to better understand how video compression on the internet or RealPlayer7 works. But outstanding if you suddenly need to understand what a video signal goes through to produce a video image.


Very strong combined introduction/reference work on video   August 21, 1999
31 out of 31 found this review helpful

For basic digital video (uncompressed), this is as near to the "bible" as you can get. Very good descriptions of existing (NTSC/PAL/ SECAM) television systems and their various format standards. Covers progressive and interlaced formats and conversion between very well. Covers scaling very well. The book is weaker on MPEG compression, with mistakes and omissions. Go elsewhere for an explanation of this standard. Overall, a great text.


Good - but definitely "geeky"   October 11, 2001
17 out of 18 found this review helpful

If you are an experienced video person, this book is for you. It does a good job of explaining the difference between all of the different digital video standards. It's helpful if you have experience with analog video before reading this book.

Be advised that it's definitely NOT a dummies book. It's very academic. You have to read through things a couple of times to get them to click. If you've just started in the world of digital video, you need to find another book.

The best thing about this book is that all of your standards definitions are all together in one place. Wondering what the encoding format is for NTSC HDTV DVCam? It's in there.


Video Demystified? I Don't think so ...   December 15, 2005
Cyborgx (Bangkok Thailand)
17 out of 19 found this review helpful

I bought this on the recomendation of someone concerning a technical question I had on Video signalling over SDI. It turned out to have about 1 paragraph on the subject, and didnt come close to being able to answer my question.

Having worked on Computers for around 20 years including writing and debugging mainframe assembler code, as well as many a day spent searching though page after page of hexadecimal, I am no stranger to bits and bites, and large libraries of thousands of technical reference manuals.

I have 3 problems with this book.

1) The title is deceiving. A more accurate title would be "Primer for decoder/encoder design" or "Video Signaling Reference Guide".

2) It cetainly does no "Demystifying". I expected a book that was structured and had a flow to it (as any educational book should) but found it to be written with absolutely NO PERSONALITY (like a reference book), and using terms at the start that then only actually get explained half way through the book!

3) There are so many tables and figures (overkill IMHO used too much to fill pages rather than explain anything well) with very little descriptions, and no keys to the diagrams. 90% of them also seem to be referred to by text many pages away from the actual graphics, which is just bad book design.

I am sure that the author really knows his stuff, and the book is full of very useful refrence information for designers, but for someone looking for an educational book on Video, you should look elsewhere, unless you have a fulltime engineer to sit with you as you read the book.

I can only recomend this as a reference book for those who already have a very good grounding in this field, or to be used in conjuction with another higher level book written by someone with much better educational skills.




Good book for learning, do not use as a reference   March 7, 2003
14 out of 15 found this review helpful

This book is a good introduction to NTSC / PAL / SECAM / digital video. The information on MPEG is superficial at best, but that is not what this book is about anyway. Expect a challenging read if you are new to this field.

This book is mainly aimed at the hardware developer. If this is you, do not base your design strictly on information in this book without reading the relevant standards documents: this contributed to the company I work for having had to spin a few chips. This book is NOT suitable as a reference.

If you're a software / driver developer, you're probably better off reading "Digital Video and HDTV" by Charles Poynton (ISBN: 1558607927). The information there will be a lot more relevant (and useful) to you. After that, you'll have a much easier time reading "Video Demystified" (if you really, really want to find out what planet the hardware designers you work with are from).