General Instrument Corporation

Motorola Corporation

Google Technology Holdings LLC

Candace M Anderson

Bao K Vuong

A method and system for embedding and recovering a spatial fingerprint in a sequence of video frames. The sequence includes marked frames that include marked groups having markable positions. The embedding method selects a frame offset and marking period for the marked frames, and determines a marking strength for modifying each marked group. A portion of the spatial fingerprint is embedded in each marked group of a first subgroup of the marked groups, and an ordering of the portion embedded in the first subgroup is embedded in each marked group of a second subgroup of the marked groups. The recovering method analyzes a quality ratio of the DCT transform energy and the residual for each markable position in the frame to determine whether the frame is a marked frame. The recovering method recovers the spatial fingerprint when the marked groups maintain the quality ratio in a number of successive marked frames.

Adaptive video fingerprinting

A method of reducing spatial noise in an image. Low-pass (smoothing) filters are calculated simultaneously from three successive image rows. Three blocks (m, m, m) are associated with the three successive image rows, and the blocks are processed in row-major order. This implementation is applicable to both luminance and chrominance. The number of smoothing parameters is reduced to one. The technique is applicable to both luminance and chrominance. Directional mapping is used. Extension of the technique to spatial filtering using a 5&#xd7;5 neighborhood (using five successive image rows) is described. Embodiments of the method using the MMX instruction set are described.

Directional spatial video noise reduction

Spatial noise is reduced in an image having a plurality of pixels by detecting object boundaries and unstructured areas in the image and applying 3-tap high pass filters to each pixel in the image in at least four, but less than eight directions to determine the best direction for local low pass filtering. Low pass filtering is applied only along object boundaries and unstructured areas within the image so as to minimize the tendency to blur image edges. Using only four high pass filters to locate horizontal, vertical and diagonal image edges passing through the center of a 3&#xd7;3 pixel array provides good results.

Directional video filters for locally adaptive spatial noise reduction

A method and apparatus for converting a digital video image to a higher aspect ratio format at a decoder by line dropping. For example, conversion from a 4:3 to a 16:9 letterbox format may be achieved. Line dropping for non-anchor pictures (e.g., B-pictures) occurs on a decoding-side of the decoder, prior to storage in memory. Line dropping for anchor pictures (e.g., I- and P-pictures) occurs on a display-side of the decoder, after being retrieved from the memory, and prior to display. Additional memory space is freed to allow storage of additional decoded data, thus compensating for the decrease in display processing time caused by a reduced number of active video lines that are processed with the letter box format.

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Rancho Santa Fe, CA, United States of America

Candace M Anderson