Patents Examined by Anner Holder
  • Patent number: 8064521
    Abstract: A motion detector detects the motion of an imaging device. On the basis of the detected motion information, a selector selects, from a plurality of frame memories for storing a plurality of frame data, a frame memory for storing reference frame data to be referred to when frame data to be coded is coded. A motion estimator estimates a motion vector on the basis of the reference frame data stored in the selected frame memory and the frame data to be coded. The frame data to be coded is coded by using the estimated motion vector, and the coded data is output.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 8, 2004
    Date of Patent: November 22, 2011
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Mitsuru Maeda
  • Patent number: 8059716
    Abstract: An apparatus for and a method of transcoding data in a first format, for example, MPEG (moving picture experts group)-2 data into data in a second format, for example, H.264 data. The apparatus may include a scaling dequantization unit, a coefficient transform unit, and/or a scaling quantization unit. The scaling dequantization unit may dequantize the data in the first format (e.g., MPEG-2 data) to generate a DCT (discrete cosine transform) coefficient. The coefficient transform unit may approximate a 4x4 second data format (e.g., H.264) integer transform matrix to a 4x4 DCT matrix and transforms the DCT coefficient into an integer transform coefficient using the approximated 4x4 DCT matrix. The scaling quantization unit may quantize the integer transform coefficient to generate the data in the second format (e.g., H.264 data).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 11, 2006
    Date of Patent: November 15, 2011
    Assignees: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Seoul National University Industry Foundation
    Inventors: Chan-Yul Park, Nam-Ik Cho
  • Patent number: 8059711
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for staggercasting, encodes a first signal representing content and encodes a second signal representing the content using encoding relatively more robust than the encoding of the first encoded content representative signal. A composite signal including at least the first and second encoded signals is generated, in which one of the first and second encoded signals is delayed with respect to the other encoded signal. If an error is detected in the composite signal, then the undelayed encoded signal is decoded to reproduce the content. Otherwise, the delayed encoded signal is decoded to reproduce the content.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 20, 2004
    Date of Patent: November 15, 2011
    Assignee: Thomson Licensing
    Inventors: Kumar Ramaswamy, Jeffrey Allen Cooper, Jill MacDonald Boyce
  • Patent number: 8040374
    Abstract: According to one embodiment, a head-separated device has an imaging unit, a control unit configured to control the imaging unit and a connection unit configured to connect the imaging unit with the control unit, wherein the imaging unit comprises sensor configured to capture an image, and a transmitter configured to transmit a video signal, a sync signal (HD, VD) and a clock signal to restore or to reproduce the image captured by the sensor, and the control unit comprises a determining module configured to determine whether a waveform of the video signal has a level that the video processor is processable, and a setting module configured to set the transmitter to perform enhancement correction to the video signal, if the determining module determines that the waveform of the video signal does not have the level that the video processor is processable.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 28, 2010
    Date of Patent: October 18, 2011
    Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
    Inventors: Masatoshi Ookubo, Hiroshi Shinozaki, Kei Tashiro, Takashi Tsuda, Hiroyuki Irikura, Junya Fukumoto
  • Patent number: 8036263
    Abstract: This disclosure describes identifying key frames from a sequence of video frames. A first set of information generated by operating on uncompressed data is accessed. A second set of information generated by compressing the data is also accessed. The first and second sets of information are used to identify key frames from the video frames.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 23, 2005
    Date of Patent: October 11, 2011
    Assignee: QUALCOMM Incorporated
    Inventors: Haohong Wang, Narendranath Malayath, Suhail Jalil
  • Patent number: 8036262
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for storing staggercasted content includes encoding a set of signals representing content. The set of signals is capable of being decoded to produce a corresponding set of decoded signals, each decoded signal having a quality different from the qualities of the decoded signals corresponding to the other encoded signals. A composite signal comprising the set of encoded signals, staggered in time, is generated. The set of encoded signals is extracted from the composite signal. Errors in the set of extracted encoded signals are detected to produce a subset of available extracted encoded signals which are not erroneous. A content representative signal at a selectable desired quality is decoded. The decoded content representative signal is then stored in a storage device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 26, 2004
    Date of Patent: October 11, 2011
    Assignee: Thomson Licensing
    Inventors: Jeffrey Allen Cooper, Jill MacDonald Boyce, Kumar Ramaswamy
  • Patent number: 8036267
    Abstract: A rate control system is disclosed for video coding applications. The rate controller assigns a quantization parameter for video data in a picture in response to complexity indicators indicative of spatial complexity, motion complexity and/or bits per pel of the picture. A virtual buffer based quantizer parameter is proposed based on a virtual buffer fullness analysis and a target rate estimate, which is derived from the complexity indicators. A second quantizer parameter is proposed from a linear regression analysis of quantizer parameters used to code previously coded pictures of similar type (e.g., I pictures, P pictures or B pictures). A coding policy decision unit defines a final quantizer parameter from a comparison of the two proposed quantizer parameters.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 23, 2008
    Date of Patent: October 11, 2011
    Assignee: Apple, Inc.
    Inventor: Atul Puri
  • Patent number: 8031768
    Abstract: A method, system, and program product for quantizing discrete cosine transform coefficients, e.g., for MPEG compression, with minimal bit rate overhead and without using a quantization matrix. This is done by scaling a uniform quantization parameter for the entire discrete cosine transform block, defining a variety of thresholds for the quantization of discrete cosine transform coefficients below which the corresponding coefficient will be quantized to zero, and setting different normative reconstructed values for coefficients that have not been quantized to zero as the decoder will still use the original, unmodified reconstructed values as long as the corresponding coefficient is not zero.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 15, 2004
    Date of Patent: October 4, 2011
    Assignee: Maxim Integrated Products, Inc.
    Inventor: Jiangtao Wen
  • Patent number: 8027386
    Abstract: A method for staggercasting, includes encoding a first signal representing content using encoding having successive independent decoding segments and encoding a second signal representing the content using encoding having successive independent decoding segments respectively corresponding to the independent decoding segments of the first encoded signal. A composite signal including the first and second encoded signals is generated in which the first encoded signal is delayed with respect to the second encoded signal. If an error is detected in the composite signal during a portion of an independent decoding segment of the delayed first encoded signal, then the corresponding independent decoding segment of the received second encoded signal is decoded to produce the content, otherwise, the received delayed first encoded signal is decoded to produce the content.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 21, 2004
    Date of Patent: September 27, 2011
    Assignee: Thomson Licensing
    Inventors: Jill MacDonald Boyce, Jeffrey Allen Cooper, Kumar Ramaswamy
  • Patent number: 8027381
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for staggercasting includes encoding a set of signals representing content. The set of encoded signals is capable of being decoded to produce a corresponding set of decoded signals, each having a quality which is different from the qualities of the decoded signals corresponding to the other encoded signals. A composite signal is generated which includes the set of encoded signals, staggered in time. The set of encoded signals extracting from the composite signal. Errors in the set of extracted encoded signals are detected to produce a subset of available extracted encoded signals which are not erroneous. A content representative signal at a selectable desired quality is then decoded.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 27, 2004
    Date of Patent: September 27, 2011
    Assignee: Thomson Licensing
    Inventors: Jill MacDonald Boyce, Kumar Ramaswamy, Jeffrey Allen Cooper
  • Patent number: 8022988
    Abstract: A display apparatus includes an object recognizing unit for receiving a plurality of video channels and recognizing at least one object moving in the video channels, a display unit for displaying the plurality of video channels so that at east one of the objects recognized by the object recognizing unit is selectable, and if receiving a selection of an object, to which a user pays attention, displaying the video channel including the attention object as an attention object, considering the selected object as the attention object, a frame in and/or out detecting unit for detecting frame-out of the attention object out of the tracking video, and a video searching unit for searching other video channels using the attention object as a searching key if the frame-out of the attention object is detected and allowing the display unit to display the detected video channel.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 29, 2004
    Date of Patent: September 20, 2011
    Assignee: FUJIFILM Corporation
    Inventors: Hiroaki Kikuchi, Yusuke Sugimoto, Yukinori Noguchi, Toshihiko Kaku
  • Patent number: 8014449
    Abstract: Communications signal transcoder. A solution is provided to transcode a signal from a first signal type to a second signal type to ensure proper interfacing between devices that may operate using different signal types. For example, within a communication system, a first signal type (having a first modulation type, e.g., 8 PSK) may be received. The transcoder then ensures that this signal, after it has undergone any initial processing (such as tuning, down-converting, decoding, and so on), is encoded into a second signal type (having a second modulation type, e.g., QPSK) such that it can interface properly with a device for which the received signal is intended. This transcoder functionality may be implemented within discrete components, or it may alternatively be integrated within a functional block of an integrated circuit. This functionality may be implemented in a variety of communication systems including satellite, cable television, Internet, and others.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 29, 2010
    Date of Patent: September 6, 2011
    Assignee: Broadcom Corporation
    Inventors: Alan Y. Kwentus, Charles Alan Brooks, Steven T. Jaffe, Stephen Edward Krafft
  • Patent number: 8000394
    Abstract: Provided are a program, a method, and an apparatus for decoding coded data, capable of completely restoring an original stream when decoded data is coded again by causing a computer to function as: means for receiving an input of a signal coded by lossy compression and orthogonally projecting an optional real number vector on one convex aggregate X in a first vector space in which the decoded signal is present; means for judging convergence of convex projection and obtaining a real number vector x belonging to the aggregate X to output the same as a decoded signal when the convergence of the convex projection is judged; and means for orthogonally projecting an optional vector of the first vector space on one convex aggregate Y in a second vector space different from the first vector space when the convergence of the convex projection is not judged, and then repeating orthogonal projection on the aggregate X and the aggregate Y with the coded signal set as an initial value.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 2004
    Date of Patent: August 16, 2011
    Assignee: Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Hiroshi Ito, Mitsuyoshi Suzuki, Minoru Wada, Ryousuke Fujii, Koichi Magai, Tomohiro Kimura
  • Patent number: 8000388
    Abstract: A method of and an apparatus for parallel processing video compression is described herein. A picture is divided into N zones vertically, and Vertical Split Parallelism (VSP) deploys N+1 processes: N M-coding processes for general macroblock coding in N zones and one E-coding process for entropy coding. By dividing a macroblock encoding process into M-coding and E-coding processes, multiple M-coding threads and one E-coding thread are able to progress simultaneously with proper synchronization between threads. Since the workload of M-coding processes is greater than E-coding for each macroblock coding process, two cores are able to be designated to the two M-coding processes. Either of the cores are able to be designated to the E-coding process since the workload of E-coding is light. Therefore, VSP utilizes parallel processing computing power efficiently.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 2007
    Date of Patent: August 16, 2011
    Assignees: Sony Corporation, Sony Electronics Inc.
    Inventors: Jonathan JiannJang Huang, Tsaifa Yu, Kuei-Chung (Larry) Tu
  • Patent number: 7995652
    Abstract: Systems and methods for the processing of images over bandwidth-limited transmission interfaces, such as processing of high resolution video images over standard analog video interfaces, using multi-stream and/or multi-resolution analog methodology. The disclosed systems and methods may also be implemented to provide video resolutions across standard analog video interfaces in a manner that supports digital capture and imaging techniques obtain useful information from digitally zoomed and enhanced video.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 19, 2004
    Date of Patent: August 9, 2011
    Assignee: UTC Fire & Security Americas Corporation, Inc.
    Inventor: Richard G. Washington
  • Patent number: 7986731
    Abstract: A rate control system is disclosed for video coding applications. The rate controller assigns a quantization parameter for video data in a picture in response to complexity indicators indicative of spatial complexity, motion complexity and/or bits per pel of the picture. A virtual buffer based quantizer parameter is proposed based on a virtual buffer fullness analysis and a target rate estimate, which is derived from the complexity indicators. A second quantizer parameter is proposed from a linear regression analysis of quantizer parameters used to code previously coded pictures of similar type (e.g., I pictures, P pictures or B pictures). A coding policy decision unit defines a final quantizer parameter from a comparison of the two proposed quantizer parameters.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 30, 2004
    Date of Patent: July 26, 2011
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Barin Haskell, Adriana Dumitras, James Normile, Hsi-Jung Wu, Xiaochun Nie, Atul Puri
  • Patent number: 7986337
    Abstract: A system and method may allow editing of an image stream, which may be produced by, for example, an ingestible capsule. A workstation accepts images acquired by the capsule and displays the images on a monitor as a moving image. The editing method may include, for example, selecting images which follow predetermined criteria. A shortened movie may thus be created.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 27, 2004
    Date of Patent: July 26, 2011
    Assignee: Given Imaging Ltd.
    Inventors: Tal Davidson, Michael Skala, Hagai Krupnik, Eli Horn
  • Patent number: 7986372
    Abstract: Systems and methods for smart media content thumbnail extraction are described. In one aspect program metadata is generated from recorded video content. The program metadata includes one or more key-frames from one or more corresponding shots. An objectively representative key-frame is identified from among the key-frames as a function of shot duration and frequency of appearance of key-frame content across multiple shots. The objectively representative key-frame is an image frame representative of the recorded video content. A thumbnail is created from the objectively representative key-frame.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 2, 2004
    Date of Patent: July 26, 2011
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Yu-Fei Ma, Bin Lin, Zhike Kong, Xinli Zou, Wei-Ying Ma, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7978770
    Abstract: A method for motion vector prediction for a current block, the current block having a set of neighboring blocks that includes blocks that do not have an associated motion vector, is disclosed. The method including deriving a candidate motion vector for each block in the set of neighboring blocks that does not have an associated motion vector; and using the candidate motion vector for each block in the set of neighboring blocks that does not have the associated motion vector to predict a current motion vector for the current block. An apparatus for performing the method is also disclosed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 20, 2005
    Date of Patent: July 12, 2011
    Assignee: QUALCOMM, Incorporated
    Inventors: Dexiang (Edward) Luo, Fang Shi, Seyfullah Halit Oguz, Vijayalakshmi R. Raveendran
  • Patent number: 7978765
    Abstract: Macroblock types of macroblocks of a video picture are encoded by adaptively employing codewords of codeword tables, based at least in part on one or more macroblock type related characteristics of one or more neighboring macroblocks of interest. The codewords may be variable in length. The one or more macroblock type characteristics may include a most common macroblock type characteristic of the neighboring macroblocks of interest. The adaptive employment of the codeword tables may be further based on a picture type of the picture of which the macroblocks are members. Decoding may be performed in an inverse manner.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 12, 2003
    Date of Patent: July 12, 2011
    Assignee: RealNetworks, Inc.
    Inventor: Gregory J. Conklin