Shift register driven video measurement system for microcomputer

A video measurement system for coupling to a video signal and for quantifying information comprised by the video signal in a fashion rendering the quantified information amenable to transfer to and processing by a computing mechanism, the system comprising:

• a transition detector having an input for coupling to the video signal and comprising a means for quantizing the video signal into respective WHITE levels and BLACK levels and for providing at an output an output signal indicating the occurrence of BLACK-TO-WHITE transitions and WHITE-TO-BLACK transitions in the video signal,
• a shift register having a clocking input coupled the output of the transition detector and at least N individual outputs,
• N individual feature timers, each having an enable input coupled to an output of the shift register, a RESET input and a CLOCK input,
• a CLOCK coupled to the CLOCK input of each of the feature timers, and
• a horizontal sync detector coupled between the video signal and the RESET input of each of the feature timers whereby each of the feature timers is reset in response to horizontal sync pulses from the horizontal sync detector and counts in response to clock pulses from the CLOCK for a respective period of time as determined by the state of the particular output of the shift register coupled to its ENABLE input so that the individual feature timers provide outputs indicative of the postions of respective selected transitions in the video signal.