1.27.1. Introduction

Some video capture devices can sample a subsection of a picture and shrink or enlarge it to an image of arbitrary size. Next, the devices can insert the image into larger one. Some video output devices can crop part of an input image, scale it up or down and insert it at an arbitrary scan line and horizontal offset into a video signal. We call these abilities cropping, scaling and composing.

On a video capture device the source is a video signal, and the cropping target determine the area actually sampled. The sink is an image stored in a memory buffer. The composing area specifies which part of the buffer is actually written to by the hardware.

On a video output device the source is an image in a memory buffer, and the cropping target is a part of an image to be shown on a display. The sink is the display or the graphics screen. The application may select the part of display where the image should be displayed. The size and position of such a window is controlled by the compose target.

Rectangles for all cropping and composing targets are defined even if the device does supports neither cropping nor composing. Their size and position will be fixed in such a case. If the device does not support scaling then the cropping and composing rectangles have the same size.