Video Demystified (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Somewhere within the 759 pages of Keith Jack's $69.95 Video Demystified: Third Edition (ISBN 1-878707-56-6) is the answer to nearly every conceivable question involving analog and digital video. The author has not only assembled a tremendous amount of information, but also structured it in a manner that enables easy navigation. Video Demystified's incremental-complexity format enables you to explore the material to whatever degree you desire. Folks who want only a high-level overview can stop when they've satisfied their objectives and won't be frustrated by lots of upfront jargon, and those who want a deeper understanding can continue reading to their hearts' content.

Jack includes a list of references at the end of each chapter, along with a 50-pg glossary at the end of book. He's also bundled two CDs, containing an e-book version of the manuscript; a directory of still test images; source code for H.261, H.263, MPEG 1, and MPEG 2 video encoders and decoders; and image sequences at various resolutions for use as test-source material for the codecs.And not only for consumer digital video, but also for the various analog formats that are in widespread use throughout the world. That's where this book comes in."
--Visual Developer

"I have never seen such a wealth of useful information about video signals as the author provides in this book. And with today's emphasis on multimedia computers, video-processing devices, and graphic add-in boards, the book is invaluable, whether you're a test engineer or a designer."
--Test and Measurement World

"Video Demystified is a one-of-a-kind book. Anyone who designs multimedia or digital-video products will most certainly benefit from reading it."
--Electronics Handbook

"This is the kind of engineer1s source book you wish publishers would do more often. It contains a vast amount of information on the relationships between video and computer graphics--everything from the ba --PC Techniques --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

"The book is a strong combination of introductory text and reference work on video. The contents are very academic and technical. It should be useful for practicing hardware developers and engineers and college students in related fields. It is recommended for academic libraries and special libraries serving these audiences."
- Xu Peng, Business Librarian, Michigan State University Gast Business Library


"I have never seen such a wealth of useful information about video signals as the author provides in this book. And with today's emphasis on multimedia computers, video-processing devices, and graphic add-in boards, the book in invaluable, whether you're a test engineering or a designer."
- Test and Measurement World

"Since there's so much to know about video - techniques, coding, formats, protocols, signal shapes, connectors, pinouts and more - I recommend an excellent, comprehensive book that I have seen on this topic. It is Video Demystified . this 900-page book is great to have handy."
- Bill Schweber, Editor, Planet Analog --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 800 pages
• Publisher: HighText Publications; 2nd edition (March 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 187870723X
• ISBN-13: 978-1878707239
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,403,823 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Everything you never wanted to know about video signals, October 24, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Video Demystified, 3rd Edition (Paperback)

If you ever wanted to be the guy in your neighborhood that knows the most about Analog and Digital video signals, then this is the book for you. I must have read the words RGB and YCrCb 100 times by page 500. And I now can tell you anything you want to know about how my VGA plug works, not to mention feeling very confident that I now understand my S-video cable on my Camcorder. If I ever travel overseas, I also have a very good grasp of the difference between "my TV signal" and "their TV signal".

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.

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very strong combined introduction/reference work on video, August 20, 1999

By A Customer

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.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book for video electronics engineers, June 3, 2006

By	calvinnme "Texan refugee" (Fredericksburg, Va) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Video Demystified, Fourth Edition (Demystifying Technology) (Paperback)

To begin with, the 4th edition of this book was released in autumn 2004, so all reviews earlier than that are referring to previous editions. I think that too many people buy this book and are expecting either "Video Algorithms Demystified" or "Video Processing Demystified". That is entirely understandable since "Video Demystified" could be talking about one or several areas of video and until you purchase the book you don't really know which one. This book should probably be relabeled as "Video Systems Demystified" to cause a minimum of confusion.

This book is most suitable for electrical engineers that are interested in video signals and their diagrams, video interfaces, connectors and their pin-outs, voltage levels, and digital data and video formats. There are many diagrams showing, for example, typical scrambler and descrambler circuits. The chapters on the video standards (MPEG-1,2,4) do a pretty good job of detailing the format of the video data as it is encoded, including all of the possible header fields, but there is virtually no discussion on any of the compression and motion estimation algorithms that do the actual encoding. There is one chapter on video signal processing, and it is very superficial.

The CD-ROM contains a large variety of color test images useful to video engineers trying to determine if their video system has any problems, and if so, produce a diagnosis. The one item in this book of particular interest to people with more of a computer science/algorithm interest in video would be the source code for MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.261, and H.263 video encoders and decoders present on the CD. However, I have not tried out these decoders myself, so I cannot speak to their functionality.

In summary, if you are an electrical/electronics engineer involved in video electronics I highly recommend this book. If you are a programmer or someone interested in the algorithms of video processing, this book will probably be only moderately (3 stars) helpful. Thus, I split the difference for a 4 star rating. I notice that Amazon only shows the content for the 3rd edition, so I show the table of contents for the 4th edition next:
Introduction 1
Introduction to Video 6
Color Spaces 15
Video Signals Overview 35
Analog Video Interfaces 66
Digital Video Interfaces 100
Digital Video Processing 202
NTSC/PAL/SECAM Overview 265
NTSC and PAL Digital Encoding and Decoding 394
H.261 and H.263 472
Consumer DV 519
MPEG-1 Video Compression 543
MPEG-2 Video Compression 581
MPEG-4 and H.264 736
ATSC Digital Television 760
OpenCable Digital Television 778
DVB Digital Television 796
ISDB Digital Television 816
IPTV 831
Glossary 841