Bell Telephone Laboratories

Birendra Prasada

Arun N Netravali

Frank W Mounts

John Ormond Limb

Earl F Brown

When a video signal is encoded using differential pulse code modulation (DPCM) techniques, the frequency of occurrence of the various quantizer output or representative levels is non-uniform; usually, low levels occur more frequently than high levels, and this characteristic can be used to advantage by applying the DPCM output to a variable length encoder before transmission. The present invention increases this advantage by intentionally forcing the quantizer output to particular levels when doing so is not harmful to the picture fidelity. By so doing, the entropy of the encoded signal is reduced by as much as 25 percent.

Video signal encoding

Video conferencing, wherein the outputs of a plurality of television cameras at one location are transmitted to a second location so that parties at the first location are perceived as present by parties at the second location, has received some attention directed toward bandwidth reduction. The subject invention relates to an improved video conferencing system for reducing bandwidth by advantageously applying temporal resolution and spatial reduction to a video picture provided by each camera. The temporal resolution of a picture from one or more of the cameras can be automatically adapted to a control signal, for example, to a speech level control signal so as to advantageously interleave and to give priority to a picture from one camera over a picture from other television cameras. The spatial reduction of each picture obtains by transmitting and displaying less than the total picture, illustratively the middle two-thirds of the picture from each camera.

Video conferencing system using spatial reduction and temporal resolution

In PCM and DPCM systems, a Hadamard orthogonal transformation of picture element signals is known to offer a means for reducing the bit rate for transmission of the signals. The first Hadamard coefficient, called H.sub.1, equals the sum of the picture element signals. Accordingly, still further reduction in the transmission bit rate can be achieved by efficiently coding H.sub.1. The disclosed coder includes a control signal generator for providing a control signal corresponding to a predetermined function of the quantized Hadamard coefficient signals. Several illustrative arrangements are disclosed. In three arrangements, the respective control signals are employed to adaptively select one of a plurality of quantizers, the selected quantizer for coding H.sub.1. In a fourth arrangement, the control signal is employed to predict H.sub.1, the predictor control signal being thereafter used for coding H.sub.1.

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Matawan, NJ, United States of America

Birendra Prasada