The Super Hi-Vision Codec

Abstract

The Super Hi-Vision (SHV) developed by NHK is an ultrahigh-definition video system with 4000 scanning lines. Its video format comprises 7,680×4,320 pixels, which is 16 times the total number of pixels of HDTV (High Definition Television) and the frame rate is 60 Hz with progressive scanning. It has been designed to give viewers a strong sense of reality. In order to make the system suitable for practical use such as broadcasting services, a high-efficiency compression coding system is necessary. Therefore, we have developed several Super Hi-Vision codec systems based on MPEG-2 and AVC/H.264 video coding standards. SHV video signals are converted to sixteen HDTV signals and each video signal is processed by HDTV codec. The codec systems share some characteristics such as the frame synchronized encoding function. In this paper, details of these codec systems are described and transmission experiments using the codec are introduced.