Hardware codec for digital HDTV recording

For the recording of HDTV signals (EUREKA standard, 1250/50/2:1) a codec has been realized which can reduce the initial data rate from 1.152 GBit/s to one-fifth. According to the desired reduction, the playtime of a digital VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) can be increased from about 40-60 minutes to at least the length of a feature film. This paper describes the hardware realization of the data rate reduction codec. Algorithms utilized are adaptive interframe/intrafield discrete cosine transform (DCT), adaptive quantization and variable length encoding (VLC). Interframe editing, multiple copy and shuttle mode are supported by a special code architecture.