Farbsignal

Farbsignal is a term commonly used in imaging and video technology to denote the portion of a signal that carries color information. In contrast to the luminance signal, which encodes brightness, the Farbsignal encodes chromatic properties such as hue and saturation. In modern systems the color information is represented in color spaces such as RGB, YCbCr, or HSV, and may be transmitted as separate channels or embedded within a single compressed stream.

Historically, analog video standards such as NTSC and PAL encode color on a chrominance subcarrier, with a color burst that enables the receiver to reconstruct color. In digital video, chroma information typically resides in dedicated chroma channels (Cb and Cr in YCbCr) or in the RGB triplet, and may be subjected to subsampling to reduce bandwidth (for example 4:2:2, 4:2:0).

Applications of the Farbsignal include broadcast television, computer displays, photography, and video production. Accurate handling of the Farbsignal is essential for color accuracy and visual quality, motivating calibration, color management, and gamut mapping. Challenges include artifacts from chroma subsampling, color encoding limits, and mismatches between color spaces.

See also: color management, chroma subsampling, color space, luma.