Paul Winkler wrote:
On Thu, Feb 22, 2007 at 12:24:47PM -1000, david wrote:
Rick Wright wrote:
Yes, but this 48bit representation of color is just 16bit x3 colors
[channels]. In other words the 48bit representation is 3 unrelated
16bit [channel] representations concatenated, one each for the 3 primary
colors/CCD sensors. The equivilent for audio would be just 16bit as
there is only one channel.
Hmmm, wouldn't there actually be TWO channels for audio - stereo?
No :-) Sure, two channels is still the most common delivery format
(eg. CD). But mono files will still be important for a long time
(eg. as individual regions in a multi-channel editor session), and for
delivery, the six-channel "5.1" format is becoming pretty common.
Hmmm - I've only seen that in games and DVD movies.
So in the audio world, by convention we talk about bit depth per
channel, not total. If the graphics people used our conventions,
they'd talk about a "16-bit, 3 channel" image, rather than saying "48
bit" and leaving the number of channels implicit. (Which is
weird. What about when you switch color spaces, eg. from RGB to CMYK?
Is it still 16 bits per channel? Do you call the CMYK file a "64-bit"
file or what?)
CMYK uses 8-bits per color, so it uses 32-bits of color information. But
its actual color space works out to less than the RGB color space that
JPG uses.
I don't know anything about the mathematics of converting from CMYK to
RGB. RGB and CYM (not including K for Black) are complimentary colors,
or something like that, and the conversion process has to turn part of
each pixel of RGB into an 8-bit shade of black. I just let the programs
do it ...
Conversely, if the audio world were to adopt the conventions of the
graphics world, we'd talk about CDs as "32-bit" audio. But we don't :)
Just wait until some recording industry marketing droid somewhere gets
the bright idea of pitching "premium 32-bit CDs!" ;-)
--
David
gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
authenticity, honesty, community
