Sony United Kingdom Limited

Antony James Gould

Jonathan James Stone

Anthony Howard Phillips

Richard Daniel Foster

Nicholas Mark Collins

Data processing apparatus has a core object for controlling overall operation of the apparatus and a plurality of plug-in COM objects arranged to communicate with the core object. The plug-in COM objects are allocated to both a COM stream interface and a COM storage interface for use in storing and/or retrieving working data.

Data storage in ole systems

Digital video processing apparatus comprising: a plurality of render processors arranged in an operational sequence, each operable to render an output result relating to an image of a video signal from input data relating to that and/or other images received from a preceding render processor in the operational sequence; and a render controller for controlling rendering operation of the render processors; each render processor being operable to communicate dependency data to the render controller, indicating which images must be rendered by a preceding render processor in order for that render processor to render output data relating to a required image; and the render controller being operable to control operation of the render processors so that images required by each render processor are rendered by preceding render processors in the operational sequence.

Digital video processing

Data processing for video special effects system

Digital video processing apparatus comprises: a plurality of render processors arranged in an operational sequence, each operable to render an output result relating to an image of a video signal from input data relating to that and/or other images received from a preceding render processor in the operational sequence; each render processor being operable to detect and communicate to other render processors whether its rendered output is constant between adjacent images.

Video special effects apparatus comprises a core program object; and a plurality of render processor plug-in program objects responsive to the core program object, the render processors being arranged in directed acyclic graph, each operable to render an output result relating to successive images of a video signal from input data relating to that and/or other images received from a preceding render processor in the directed acyclic graph and in response to operational parameters relating to that render processor; in which each operational parameter is defined by a parameter plug-in object arranged to communicate a parameter value to the render processor plug-in object.

Animation of video special effects

Video processing apparatus and method, in which successive video processing operations are applied to images generate corresponding processing results in the form of images or data, for storing cached items and processing results associated with the video processing operations, and providing for deleting currently cached items to provide cache space for items to be newly cached, so that non-image processing results are retained in the cache for longer than processing results in the form of images.

Caching in digital video processing apparatus

A method of data processing in which a composite data processing operation, for execution by a data processing device having a memory, is assembled by a user as a linked list of sub-operations selected from a set of possible data processing sub-operations, comprises the steps of: as a sub-operation is selected by the user for inclusion in the composite operation, loading into the memory sub-operation data defining parameters of that sub-operation including input and output interfaces of that sub-operation; and in response to an initiation of execution of a sub-operation, loading sub-operation program code into the memory for execution by the data processing device; in which the sub-operation data requires less memory space than the sub-operation program code.

Data processing method using sub-operation metadata to determine execution sequencing prior to object loading

Video processing and rendering

Video special effects apparatus comprises a plurality of video special effects processing modules; a display screen; a palette area on the display screen, the palette area displaying module screen icons representing video special effects processing modules; a graph area on the display screen; user-operable means for moving screen icons from the palette area to the graph area and for graphically linking the screen icons together to form a representation of a composite video special effects process; and user-operable means for a group of selecting two or more linked screen icons displayed in the graph area and transferring the group to the palette area, the group being represented in the palette area as a composite process screen icon in the palette area.

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Basingstoke, United Kingdom

Antony James Gould