This paper presents,the design of a multi-standard NTSC/PAL video encoder. The encoder converts International Telecommunication Union-Recommendation (ITU-R) BT.601 4:2:2, ITU-R BT.656 or RGB inputs from various video sources into National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) or phase-alternate line (PAL) TV signals in both S-video and composite video baseband signals (CVB). The encoder adopts multiplier-free structures to reduce hardware complexity. The hardware bit width of programmable digital filters for luminance and chrominance signals, along with other operating blocks, are carefully determined to produce high-quality digital video signals of 1 least significant bit (LSB) error or less. The proposed encoder is experimentally demonstrated by using the Altera APEX20K600EBC652-3 device. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.