Roscor Michigan hosted this month's meeting of the Detroit Section at their offices in Farmington Hills and also provided refreshments for the attendees.
Jim Edwards from Tektronix, Inc. Video/Comm Division in Huntsville, Alabama was the speaker at the meeting. He has been with Tektronix since 1982 and is a District Sales and Account Manager. Mr. Edwards is currently Governor of the Southern Region of SMPTE and has also served as Chairman of the Nashville Section.
Mr. Edwards described a system that provides a fast, practical and repeatable objective measurement alternative to subjective evaluation of picture quality. He explained that the best measure of any analog or digital television system is the viewer's satisfaction with the image received.
Traditionally, the quality of analog and full-bandwidth digital video systems has been measured indirectly by measuring the distortions of static test signals. Compressed television systems, however, pose a far more difficult measurement challenge. Picture quality in these systems changes dynamically based on the data rate, picture complexity and encoding algorithm employed.
The static nature of test signals does not provide true characterization of picture quality. Natural test scenes that are far more complex than test signals must be used to stress the capabilities of compressed video systems.
A Q&A session followed the presentation.