1999 May 03
15
Philips Semiconductors
Product specification
Picture Improved Combined Network
(PICNIC)
SAA4978H
The sum of the filter outputs is fed through a coring circuit
with a user definable transfer curve between
7 and +7 LSB at a 12-bit level. The definition of the coring
LUT is realized with two control registers. Herein, for each
of the points in the transfer curve, the user can define an
output between 0 and the input value. For the LUT
points +7 (and
7), a choice can be made from
(
4) +4 to (
7) +7. By setting control bit CORING to LOW,
the coring transfer curve is switched to a coarse coring
which is only dependent on the threshold (see Fig.13).
The so formed peaking signal can be added to the original
luminance signal, the sum of which then becomes the 9-bit
output signal (black-to-white), with an additional DA shift
fitting within 10 bits.
For dynamic use of the peaking circuit, an additional gain
is provided on the peaking signal. This gain is made
dependent on the energy in the peaking signal.
To overcome an unwanted coring on structured small
signals, the output of the low-pass filter is also used to
monitor if the high frequency contents are large enough to
refrain from coring. Therefore the coring is set off if the HF
energy level rises above a user definable threshold.
Spectral measurements are performed with the
spectr_meas subpart, by calculating the sum of the
absolute values from a chosen one of the three (high-pass
and band-pass) filter outputs over a vertical window in a
video field. With this window it is possible to disable
subtitles. The maximum value of the chosen filter output
within a windowed video field is also monitored. For the
generally lower HF contents of the video signal, a
weighting by a factor 4 can be switched in, while
measuring on the High-Pass Filter (HPF).
7.2.18
N
ON
-
LINEAR PHASE FILTER BEFORE
DAC
This non-linear phase filter adjusts for possible group
delay differences in the Y, U and V output channels, and
for sinus x/x bandwidth loss of the ADCs. The filter
coefficients are [
L
×
(1
u); 1 + L;
L
×
u]; where
L determines the strength of the filter and u determines the
asymmetry. The effect of the asymmetry is that for higher
frequencies the delay is decreased for u
≤
0.5. Settings
are provided for L = 0,
1
8
,
2
8
,
3
8
and u = 0,
1
4
,
1
2
.
7.2.19
DCTI
The Digital Colour Transient Improvement (DCTI) is
intended for U and V signals originating from a 4 : 1 : 1
source. Horizontal transients are detected and enhanced
without overshoots by differentiating, making absolute and
again differentiating the U and V signals separately. This
signal is used as a pointer to make a time modulation.
This results in a 4 : 4 : 4 U and V bandwidth. To prevent
third harmonic distortion, typical for this processing, a so
called ‘over the hill protection’ prevents peak signals from
becoming distorted. It is possible to control gain, width,
connect U and V and over the hill range via the
microcontroller.
At the output of the DCTI a post-filter is situated to make a
correction for the simple upsampling in DCTI which is a
linear interpolation [1; 2; 1]. The post-filter coefficients are
[
1; 2; 6; 2;
1], convolution of both filters gives
[
1; 0; 9; 16; 9; 0;
1]. This post-filter should only be used
when the DCTI is off, and the source material is 4 : 2 : 2
bandwidth.
7.2.20
B
ORDER BLANK
The border and blanking processing is operating at a
4 : 4 : 4 level, just before the analog-to-digital conversion.
Here it is possible to generate a blanking window and
within this window a border window. The blanking window
is used to blank the non-visible part of the output to the
clamp level. The border window is the visible part of the
video that contains no video, such as the sides in
compression mode, this part can be programmed to
display any luminance or colour level in an 8-bit accuracy;
pixel repetition is also possible here. In case of multi PIP
this block can generate separation borders in the
horizontal and vertical direction.