The Digital Fact Book - Quantel

Resolution co-existenceTerm coined by Quantel to describe equipment able to operate with several moving imageformats at the same time. For example, an editing system able to store and operate withany DTV production format material, making transitions between shots, composing layersoriginating from more than one format (resolution) and outputting in any chosen format.Good equipment will be designed for fast operation at the largest specified TV format,e.g. 1920 x 1080 HD, and so may operate faster with smaller images, but also may be ableto handle larger images.See also: Resolution independentResolution independentA term used to describe the notion of equipment that can operate at more than one resolution,though not necessarily at the same time. Historically, most dedicated television equipmentwas designed to operate at a single resolution although some equipment, especially thatusing the ITU-R BT.601 standard, could switch between the specific formats and aspectratios of 525/60 and 625/50. More recently, the advent of the multiple formats of HDTVhas encouraged new equipment able to operate with many, or all, of the video standards.In today’s converged media world the gamut of digital ‘video’ formats now includes motionpicture formats up to 4K and mobile TV operating in many formats down to 320x240,or 176x144 on phones.RBy their nature computers can handle files of almost any size so, when used for images, theycan be termed ‘resolution independent’. However, as larger images require more processing,more storage and more bandwidth so, for a given platform, the speed of operation will slowas the resolution increases.Other considerations when changing between video image resolutions may include theneed to reformat or partition disks, check for sufficient RAM, allow extra time for RAM/diskcaching and to select an appropriate display.See also: Resolution co-existenceResolving powerThe resolving power of an imaging medium is a measure of its maximum spatial resolution.For digital media the pixel count dictates the maximum possible resolving power. For film itis assessed by exposing it to special test images comprising sine wave bars of successivelyhigher frequencies. The results on the processed film are then judged by a panel of viewers– making them somewhat subjective.See also: MTF146