Recording and editing hdtv signals

Abstract

A method is disclosed for compressing an HDTV signal ( ) in such a manner that it can be recorded and edited with SDTV equipment ( ). More particularly, the HDTV signal is recorded on digital recorders (e.g. DVCPRO) which have been designed for recording compressed SDTV signals. A sub-sampled version of the HDTV signal is recorded in first locations ( ) of compressed macroblocks in a manner complying with the relevant SDTV recording format. The HDTV signal is compressed ( ) and formatted ( ) for being recorded in further locations ( ). Between said first and further locations, an end-of-block code ( ) is recorded so that the recorder ( ) will ignore the HDTV data. Upon playback, a recognizable version of the sub-sampled HDTV signal is displayed on an SDTV receiver ( ). Readily available SDTV equipment can thus be used for HDTV editing. In one embodiment of the invention, the sub-sampled HDTV signal consists of selected DC coefficients. The corresponding SDTV version is a full-screen but low-resolution image (FIG. B). In another embodiment, the HDTV signal is first sub-sampled in the pixel domain and separately encoded. The corresponding SDTV version is displayed at the normal SDTV resolution but has a reduced size (FIG. B).