Abstract: Herein disclosed are a switching apparatus and a vehicle-mounted electronic apparatus having the switching apparatus assembled therein.

Abstract: A switch includes a transparent housing, a control member, and several light emitting elements; the control member is held in and pivoted to the housing with a depressed portion being within an opening at one end of the housing; the housing has two side compartments on two sides of a middle compartment, and an annular protrusion around the opening on an outer side thereof; the light emitting elements are held in the side compartments of the housing with legs thereof projecting outwards through other end of the housing such that the switch is available with the light emitting elements therein, and such that a circle of light will show on the annular protrusion around the control member when the light emitting elements are powered.

Abstract: A decoding apparatus comprises a variable length decoder that decodes zero-run length and nonzero coefficient, an inverse quantizer that inverse-quantizes the nonzero coefficient, a zero-run reconstruction processor that reconstruct zero coefficients, a FIFO memory that store the zero-run length data and nonzero coefficients, an inverse discrete cosine transformer that subjects the coefficients to an inverse discrete cosine transformation, and a motion compensator that subjects the transformed result to a motion compensation.

Abstract: A method codes an output bitstream of an input video so the decoded output bitstream has a constant perceived quality. A base layer bitstream having a constant bit-rate is generated from the input video, and an input enhancement layer bitstream is generated from a difference between the input video and the base layer bitstream. Rate and distortion characteristics are extracted from the base layer bitstream and the input enhancement layer bitstream, and an output enhancement layer bitstream having a variable bit-rate is generated from the input enhancement layer bitstream according to the rate and distortion characteristics. The base layer bitstream and the output enhancement layer bitstream, in combination, form an output bitstream having a variable bit-rate and a constant distortion.

Abstract: A transfer switch that includes output contacts, primary input contacts, secondary input contacts and a switch stack. The switch stack alternately connects the output contacts to the primary input contacts and the secondary input contacts via at least one conductive path. The transfer switch further includes at least one flux barrier that is at least partially positioned near the conductive path to minimize magnetic interaction with the conductive path as current travels through the switch stack.

Abstract: An electrical switch includes a casing having a central and two side chambers that are separated from the central chamber by respective partitions. A switching mechanism in each second chamber has fixed and moving contacts and an actuator. A rocker in the central chamber is used to cause the actuators to move the moving contacts into contact with and out of contact from the fixed contacts. There is also included engaging means engaging each actuator to the rocker for movement thereby, which has a circular part that extends across the first and second chambers rotatably snugly through a circular hole in the partition such that partitioning between the central and side chambers is substantially splash, jet or dust proof.

Abstract: A key top, a key top lighting device and an electronic apparatus with improved operability for use in the dark is provided wherein the key top can be illuminated at a low power consumption rate and without disturbing the people nearby. Specifically, a transparent fluorescent ink that emits fluorescent light upon being irradiated by black light having a wavelength within a range of 300 nm to 450 nm is printed on the key top, and a black light lamp irradiates the black light on this key top, so that the operability of the key top can be improved when used in the dark.

Abstract: In order to facilitate fixing an operating button to the front panel of an electric device, the operation button includes a rectangular frame having at least one engagement piece integrally connected to and extending downwards from its bottom side. The operation button can be fixedly held on the lower side by press-fitting the engagement piece into an associated engagement slot made in the bottom plate of the cabinet. The front panel has at least one tapped boss fixed to its rear side, thereby allowing the frame to be screwed on the upper side to the tapped boss. Alternatively, the front panel has at least one apertured engagement piece fixed to its rear side, whereas the frame has at least one yieldingly bendable curved hook integrally connected to its upper side. The curved hook has a nail formed at its free end. The upper side of the operation button is fixed to the front panel by press-fitting the nail of the curved hook in the aperture of the engagement piece of the front panel.

Abstract: A method of detecting I-frames in a video signal which has previously been MPEG coded, involves taking a DCT and analyzing the frequency of zero value coefficients. An I-frame, which does not utilize prediction coding is expected to have a higher number of zero coefficients than a predicted P- or B-frame.

Abstract: A method for promoting temporal resolution of sequential images is to firstly choose a first visual frame and split it into a plurality of visual blocks according to a predetermined value, then choose a second visual frame. The method then goes to search the second visual frame for mostly resembling respective visual blocks corresponding to every visual block in the first visual frame and estimate the vector displacement of respective corresponding visual blocks of the visual frames. Further, it goes to rebuild a visual frame, estimate the respective pixel values of respective corresponding visual blocks of the visual frames at a time point, combine the pixel values of visual blocks to create the rebuilt visual frame, apply a median-value-filtering procedure upon the rebuilt visual frame, and apply a spatial low-pass filtering procedure upon the rebuilt visual frame, which has undergone the previous procedure.

Abstract: A multi-directional switch contains a bearing 4, an operating shaft 3 supported rockably by the bearing 4, and a cam 15c for giving a required feeling of operation to a rocking operation of the operating shaft 3. In the cam 15c, a spherical surface-shaped bottom portion 41 for holding the operating shaft 3 in a non-operation position, first inclined surfaces 42, 43, 44 and 45 formed in a radial shape at an outer circumference of the bottom portion 41, and second inclined surfaces 46, 47, 48 and 49 formed in a radial shape at an outer circumference of the first inclined surfaces, are formed, and at the boundaries between the first inclined surfaces and the second inclined surfaces, swelled step portions 50, 51, 52 and 53 are formed, respectively.

Abstract: An electronic endoscope system with a color-balance alteration system includes a video scope having a CCD image sensor for producing a frame of color image-pixel-signals composed of frames of red, green, and blue image-pixel-signals. In the color-balance alteration system, nine red signals are extracted from the frame of red image-pixel-signals, and the nine signals form a 3×3 matrix including a central signal, and the eight circumferential signals. All four sets of three signals are selected from the nine signals, and each set of three signals is composed of the central signal, and two neighbouring signals aligned with each other such that the central signal lies therebetween. When a signal level of the central signal is smaller than both signal levels of the two circumferential signals with respect to even one set of three signals, the signal level of signal is decreased.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for transcoding macroblocks of a high definition television signal to co-sited macroblocks of a standard definition television signal wherein SD macroblocks are derived directly from co-sited HD macroblocks, i.e. without having to compute the SD macroblock information from its corresponding SD image sequence.

Abstract: A coded moving-picture signal is decoded by a resolution-converting motion compensation process and a resolution-converting inverse discrete cosine transform, both of which decrease the resolution of the picture, thereby reducing the amount of reference picture data that has to be stored and accessed. The reference picture data may also be stored in a compressed form. The resolution conversion and compression processes may also be used in the coding of the moving-picture signal. The resolution-converting inverse discrete cosine transform may be performed by output of intermediate results that have not been combined by addition and subtraction in a butterfly computation.

Abstract: A viewpoint position detecting apparatus respectively detects first position information representing a position with respect to a first direction and second position information representing a position with respect to a second direction using different methods. The methods used to detect the first and second position information have different precisions. The apparatus outputs the first and second position information as the viewpoint position of a subject.

Abstract: A source model in combination with an interest structure is provided to generate a quantization value for use in encoding a video signal. The interest structure is generated from a region of interest manually identified by a user viewing the video on an interactive user display or automatically by a system which recognizes the regions of interest automatically. The region of interest in the video signal is encoded using a quantization value calculated from the interest structure in combination with the source model, and the region of interest is encoded at a higher resolution level than surrounding regions.

Abstract: According to the data amount and the nature of a video stream and an audio stream included in a program stream which is to be decoded, an audio and video processing apparatus performs processing while allocating higher priority to one or the other of the video and audio streams. Without any increase in circuit complexity or clock speed, this apparatus can reproduce streams in at least two formats, in which the ratios of the amounts of encoded signal data and of the amounts of calculation required for decoding for the video and the audio are very different.

Abstract: A device or method for video compression uses a technique in which changes in the image are encoded by motions of block of the image and signals indicating evolutions in the block. To determine the motions of the blocks of a each frame, a search is performed for a similar block of a previous frame based on points of the previous frame which are arranged in successive diamond shaped zones. The diamond shaped zones may be centred on the position of the block in previous frame, or one or more predicted motions of the block. The method terminates according to criteria defined using thresholds.

Abstract: A pixel calculating device that performs vertical filtering on pixel data in order to reduce frame data in a vertical direction. The pixel calculating device includes a decoding unit 401 for decoding compressed video data to produce frame data, frame memory 402 for storing the frame data, a filtering unit 403 for reducing the frame data in a vertical direction by the vertical filtering to produce a reduced image, buffer memory 404 for storing the reduced image outputted from filtering unit 403, and a control unit 406 for controlling filtering unit 403 based on a decoding state of the video data by decoding unit 401 and a filtering state of the frame data by filtering unit 403, so that overrun and underrun do not occur in filtering unit 403.

Abstract: A video bitrate control method for a video coding system, the coding system generating coded video frames to be stored in a storage device and originating from a sequence of input frames, the method comprising at least a quantization step for applying to the input frames a quantization factor issued from an evaluation step. The evaluation step uses statistics relative to previous coded frames to evaluate a complexity of the current frame to be coded. In parallel, a current bit target for the frame being coded is estimated in relation to the remaining space available in the storage device and the remaining number of frames to be coded in the sequence. Then the quantization factor is derived on the basis of the estimated complexity and the estimated current bit target. This results in an output bitrate for coded frames having CBR or VBR behaviors, leading to a constant quality of the coded video frames, while guaranteeing an optimal filling of the storage device.