Video scaler
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A video scaler is a system that converts
video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...
signals from one
display resolution The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor, or other display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resoluti ...
to another; typically, scalers are used to convert a signal from a lower resolution (such as
480p 480p is the shorthand name for a family of video display resolutions. The p stands for progressive scan, i.e. non-interlaced. The ''480'' denotes a vertical resolution of 480 pixels, usually with a horizontal resolution of 640 pixels and 4:3 a ...
standard definition Standard-definition television (SDTV; also standard definition or SD) is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. ''Standard'' refers to offering a similar resolution to the ...
) to a higher resolution (such as
1080i In high-definition television (HDTV) and video display technology, 1080i is a video display format with 1080 lines of vertical resolution and Interlaced video, interlaced scanning method. This format was once a standard in HDTV. It was particular ...
high definition), a process known as "upconversion" or "upscaling" (by contrast, converting from high to low resolution is known as "downconversion" or "downscaling"). Video scalers are typically found inside
consumer electronics Consumer electronics, also known as home electronics, are electronic devices intended for everyday household use. Consumer electronics include those used for entertainment, Communication, communications, and recreation. Historically, these prod ...
devices such as
television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
s,
video game console A video game console is an electronic device that Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally ...
s, and
DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...
or
Blu-ray Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...
players, but can also be found in other AV equipment (such as
video editing Video editing is the post-production and arrangement of video shots. To showcase excellent video editing to the public, video editors must be reasonable and ensure they have a thorough understanding of film, television, and other sorts of videog ...
and
television broadcasting A television broadcaster or television network is a telecommunications network for the distribution of television content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations, pay television providers or, in the United ...
equipment). Video scalers can also be completely separate devices, often providing simple video switching capabilities. These units are commonly found as part of
home theatre A home cinema, also called home theater, is a home entertainment audio-visual system that seeks to reproduce a movie theater experience and mood using consumer grade electronic video and audio equipment and is set up in a private home. In t ...
or projected presentation systems. They are often combined with other
video processing In electronics engineering, video processing is a particular case of signal processing, in particular image processing, which often employs filter (video), video filters and where the input and output Signal (electrical engineering), signals are vid ...
devices or algorithms to create a video processor that improves the apparent definition of video signals. Video scalers are primarily a
digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...
device; however, they can be combined with an
analog-to-digital converter In electronics, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC, A/D, or A-to-D) is a system that converts an analog signal, such as a sound picked up by a microphone or light entering a digital camera, into a Digital signal (signal processing), digi ...
(ADC, or digitizer) and a
digital-to-analog converter In electronics, a digital-to-analog converter (DAC, D/A, D2A, or D-to-A) is a system that converts a digital signal into an analog signal. An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) performs the reverse function. DACs are commonly used in musi ...
(DAC) to support analog inputs and outputs.


Process

The native resolution of a display is how many physical pixels make up each row and column of the visible area on the display's output surface. There are many different video signals in use which are not the same resolution (neither are all of the displays), thus some form of resolution adaptation is required to properly frame a video signal to a display device. For example, within the
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, there are
NTSC NTSC (from National Television System Committee) is the first American standard for analog television, published and adopted in 1941. In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard 170. In 1953, a second ...
, ATSC, and
VESA VESA (), formally known as Video Electronics Standards Association, is an American standards organization, technical standards organization for computer display standards. The organization was incorporated in California in July 1989To retrieve ...
video standards each with several different resolution video formats. Multiple common resolutions are also used for
high-definition television High-definition television (HDTV) describes a television or video system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since at least 1933; in more recent times, it ref ...
;
720p 720p (720 lines progressive) is a progressive HD signal format with 720 horizontal lines/1280 columns and an aspect ratio (AR) of 16:9, normally known as widescreen HD (1.78:1). All major HD broadcasting standards (such as SMPTE 292M) includ ...
,
1080i In high-definition television (HDTV) and video display technology, 1080i is a video display format with 1080 lines of vertical resolution and Interlaced video, interlaced scanning method. This format was once a standard in HDTV. It was particular ...
, and
1080p 1080p (1920 × 1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the sc ...
. While scaling a video signal does allow it to match the size of a particular display, the process can result in an increased number of
visual artifacts Visual artifacts (also artefacts) are artifact (error), anomalies apparent during visual representation as in digital graphics and other forms of imagery, especially photography and microscopy. In digital graphics * Image quality#Image quality ...
in the signal, such as ringing and
posterization Posterization or posterisation of an image is the conversion of a continuous gradation of tone to several regions of fewer tones, causing abrupt changes from one tone to another. This was originally done with photographic processes to create ...
.


Scaling by television channels

Television channels that air a mixture of 16:9 (or high-definition) programming and 4:3 (or standard definition) programming may employ scaling or cropping in order to make the programming fill the entire screen, as opposed to pillarboxing the feed instead, in order to maintain consistency in format. Likewise, broadcasters downscale programming produced in 16:9 for broadcast on their 4:3 feeds through letterboxing—either as a full 16:9 letterbox, or a partial 14:9 letterbox—a technique used primarily by European broadcasters during the transition to
digital terrestrial television Digital terrestrial television (DTTV, DTT, or DTTB) is a technology for terrestrial television, in which television stations broadcast television content in a digital signal, digital format. Digital terrestrial television is a major technologica ...
. The Active Format Description standard is a system of variables defining various scaling, letterboxing, and pillarboxing states; broadcasting equipment and televisions can be configured to automatically switch to the appropriate state based on the AFD flag encoded in the content and the aspect ratio of the display. When the U.S. cable network TNT introduced an HD feed in
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, it controversially employed a stretching system known as FlexView (which was also offered to other broadcasters). FlexView used a nonlinear method to stretch more near the edges of the screen than in the center of it. The practice was imposed by the senior vice president of
broadcast engineering Broadcast engineering or radio engineering is the field of electrical engineering, and now to some extent computer engineering and information technology, which deals with radio and television broadcasting. Audio engineering and RF engineering a ...
at TNT, Clyde D. Smith, who argued that pillarboxing led to inconsistency between programs for viewers, could cause
burn-in Burn-in is the process by which components of a system are exercised before being placed in service (and often, before the system being completely assembled from those components). This testing process will force certain failures to occur under ...
on plasma televisions, some older HDTVs could not stretch 4:3 content automatically, and the quality of stretching on some displays was poor. Despite TNT's intentions, the system was frequently criticized by viewers of high definition channels, with some nicknaming the effect "Stretch-O-Vision". In 2014, FXX faced similar criticism for its use of cropping and scaling on reruns of ''
The Simpsons ''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening, James L. Brooks and Sam Simon for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is a Satire (film and television), satirical depiction of American life ...
'' (which only started producing episodes in HD beginning in its 20th season), as its cropping method caused various visual gags to be lost. In February 2015, FXX announced that in response to these complaints, it would present these episodes in their original 4:3 aspect ratio on its video-on-demand service. Since about 2008, some networks and cable companies have run high-definition versions of old programming that was originally shot on film shown in the 4:3 format. This format always cropped the sides of the image. For example, syndicated broadcast stations and the cable network TBS air ''
Seinfeld ''Seinfeld'' ( ) is an American television sitcom created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, with a total of nine seasons consisting of List of Seinfeld episodes, 180 episodes. It ...
'' in HD. The series producer, Sony Pictures went to the 35 mm film source, making new HD masters and cropping the top and bottom parts of the frame, while restoring the sides.


AI upscaling

In 2023, video upscaling products using
generative artificial intelligence Generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI, GenAI, or GAI) is a subfield of artificial intelligence that uses generative models to produce text, images, videos, or other forms of data. These models Machine learning, learn the underlyin ...
were previewed or released, such as NVIDIA's Video Super Resolution and
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's Project Res-Up. Unlike previous upscaling systems, these technologies generated new data based on provided video frames.


See also

*
Deinterlacing Deinterlacing is the process of converting interlaced video into a non-interlaced or Progressive scan, progressive form. Interlaced video signals are commonly found in analog television, VHS, Laserdisc, digital television (HDTV) when in the 1080 ...
*
Image scaling In computer graphics and digital imaging, image scaling refers to the resizing of a digital image. In video technology, the magnification of digital material is known as upscaling or resolution enhancement. When scaling a vector graphic image ...
*


References

{{Reflist Film and video technology High-definition television Television terminology