High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! ITU-R Recommendation BT.601, more commonly known by the abbreviations Rec. 601 or BT.601 (or its former name, CCIR 601,) is a standard published in 1982 by International Telecommunication Union - Radiocommunications sector (formerly CCIR) for encoding interlaced analog video signals in digital video form. It includes methods of encoding 525-line 60 Hz and 625-line 50 Hz signals, both with 720 luminance samples and 360 chrominance samples per line. The color encoding system is known as YCbCr 4:2:2. For a pair of pixels, the data are stored in the order Y1:Cb:Y2:Cr, with the chrominance samples co-sited with the first luminance sample.