An experimental digital VCR with 40 mm drum, single actuator and DCT-based bit-rate reduction

An experimental digital video recording system based on small recording mechanics is described. High picture quality at moderate recording bit rates is obtained with component coded video and application of an advanced bit-rate reduction technique based on the discrete cosine transform (DCT). A single actuator allows for high tracking accuracy and multispeed playback. Reasonable picture quality has been obtained at 10 Mb/s. High picture quality, with hardly noticeable coding noise, was obtained at 19 Mb/s. For scenes with critical motion, the use of motion-adaptive processing is required.