FLC and VLC coding for professional digital HDTV recording — Application to D1-like recorders

Digital recording is a key issue for HDTV studio applications. However, digital baseband recording of HDTV has some drawbacks, for example, high tape consumption and the fact that 1.2 Gbit/s recorders are close to technology limits. Bit-rate reduction techniques allow these difficulties to be overcome. This paper deals with two different approaches for picture coding suitable for professional HDTV recording, with special attention paid to compatibility with existing D1 VCRs (video cassettes recorder). The first approach considers that the behavior of a recorder requires FLC (fixed length code) data as opposed to VLC (variable length code) data, and the second approach supposes that the problems generated by use of VLC data can be overcome with preanalysis and extra error protection strategies. Comparisons of efficiency are presented including multiple copying.