Apple Inc.

Hang Yuan

Hsi-Jung Wu

Xiaosong Zhou

Dazhong Zhang

Jae Hoon Kim

Jiefu Zhai

Chris Yoochang Chung

Ming Chen

Alexandros Michael Tourapis

Xiaohua Yang

Peikang Song

Sudeng Hu

Christopher M Garrido

Karthick Santhanam

Xing Wen

Ming Jin

Yeping Su

Beibei Wang

David L Biderman

Luciano Miguel Verger

Patrick Miauton

Eric L Chien

Albert E Keinath

Vikrant Kasarabada

Kevin Arthur Robertson

David R Conrad

Gurtej Singh Chandok

Jingteng Xue

Joshua L Hare

Davide Concion

Bess C Chan

Sasanka T Vemuri

Jinbo Qiu

Giribalan Gopalan

In communication applications, aggregate source image data at a transmitter exceeds the data that is needed to display a rendering of a viewport at a receiver. Improved streaming techniques that include estimating a location of a viewport at a future time. According to such techniques, the viewport may represent a portion of an image from a multi-directional video to be displayed at the future time, and tile(s) of the image may be identified in which the viewport is estimated to be located. In these techniques, the image data of tile(s) in which the viewport is estimated to be located may be requested at a first service tier, and the other tile in which the viewport is not estimated to be located may be requested at a second service tier, lower than the first service tier.

Adaptive coding and streaming of multi-directional video

Techniques are disclosed for coding video data predictively based on predictions made from spherical-domain projections of input pictures to be coded and reference pictures that are prediction candidates. Spherical projection of an input picture and the candidate reference pictures may be generated. Thereafter, a search may be conducted for a match between the spherical-domain representation of a pixel block to be coded and a spherical-domain representation of the reference picture. On a match, an offset may be determined between the spherical-domain representation of the pixel block to a matching portion of the of the reference picture in the spherical-domain representation. The spherical-domain offset may be transformed to a motion vector in a source-domain representation of the input picture, and the pixel block may be coded predictively with reference to a source-domain representation of the matching portion of the reference picture.

Sphere projected motion estimation/compensation and mode decision

Embodiments of the present disclosure provide systems and methods for perspective shifting in a video conferencing session. In one exemplary method, a video stream may be generated. A foreground element may be identified in a frame of the video stream and distinguished from a background element of the frame. Data may be received representing a viewing condition at a terminal that will display the generated video stream. The frame of the video stream may be modified based on the received data to shift of the foreground element relative to the background element. The modified video stream may be displayed at the displaying terminal.

Systems and methods for perspective shifting in video conferencing session

In an example method, a system receives a plurality of frames of a video, and generates a data structure representing the video and representing a plurality of temporal layers. Generating the data structure includes: (i) determining a plurality of quality levels for presenting the video, where each of the quality levels corresponds to a different respective sampling period for sampling the frames of the video, (ii) assigning, based on the sampling periods, each of the frames to a respective one of the temporal layers of the data structure, and (iii) indicating, in the data structure, one or more relationships between (a) at least one the frames assigned to at least one of the temporal layers of the data structure, and (b) at least another one of the frames assigned to at least another one of the temporal layers of the data structure. Further, the system outputs the data structure.

Encoding and decoding video content

Techniques are disclosed for coding video data in which frames from a video source are partitioned into a plurality of tiles of common size, and the tiles are coded as a virtual video sequence according to motion-compensated prediction, each tile treated as having respective temporal location of the virtual video sequence. The coding scheme permits relative allocation of coding resources to tiles that are likely to have greater significance in a video coding session, which may lead to certain tiles that have low complexity or low motion content to be skipped during coding of the tiles for select source frames. Moreover, coding of the tiles may be ordered to achieve low coding latencies during a coding session.

Efficient coding of source video sequences partitioned into tiles

Techniques are presented for modifying images of an object in video, for example to correct for lens distortion, or to beautify a face. These techniques include extracting and validating features of an object from a source video frame, tracking those features over time, estimating a pose of the object, modifying a 3D model of the object based on the features, and rendering a modified video frame based on the modified 3D model and modified intrinsic and extrinsic matrices. These techniques may be applied in real-time to an object in a sequence of video frames.

Real-time face and object manipulation

Methods and Systems disclosed to counteract spatial distortions introduced by imaging processes of multi-directional video frames, where objects may be projected to spherical or equirectangular representations. Techniques provided to invert the spatial distortions in video frames used as reference picture data in predictive coding, by spatially transforming the image content of the reference picture data before this image content is being used for the prediction of input video data in prediction-based coders and decoders.

Processing of equirectangular object data to compensate for distortion by spherical projections

Systems and methods for coding a video to be overlaid by annotations are devised. A motion compensated predictive coding is employed, wherein coding parameters of video pixel blocks are determined based on the pixel blocks' relation to the annotations. A decoder decodes the video and annotates it based on metadata, obtained from the coder or other sources, describing the annotations' appearance and rendering mode.

Efficient coding of video data in the presence of video annotations

Techniques are disclosed for managing display of content from multi-view video data. According to these techniques, an object may be identified from content of the multi-view video. The object's location may be tracked across a sequence of multi-view video. The technique may extract a sub-set of video that is contained within a view window that is shifted in an image space of the multi-view video in correspondence to the tracked object's location. These techniques may be implemented either in an image source device or an image sink device.

Object tracking in multi-view video

Techniques are disclosed for managing memory allocations when coding video data according to multiple codec configurations. According to these techniques, devices may negotiate parameters of a coding session that include parameters of a plurality of different codec configurations that may be used during the coding session. A device may estimate sizes of decoded picture buffers for each of the negotiated codec configurations and allocate in its memory a portion of memory sized according to a largest size of the estimated decoded picture buffers. Thereafter, the devices may exchange coded video data. The exchange may involve decoding coded data of reference pictures and storing the decoded reference pictures in the allocated memory. During the coding session, the devices may toggle among the different negotiated codec configurations. As they do, reallocations of memory may be avoided.

Dynamic video configurations

Aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for reducing latency and improving image quality of a viewport extracted from multi-directional video communications. According to such techniques, first streams of coded video data are received from a source. The first streams include coded data for each of a plurality of tiles representing a multi-directional video, where each tile corresponding to a predetermined spatial region of the multi-directional video, and at least one tile of the plurality of tiles in the first streams contains a current viewport location at a receiver. The techniques include decoding the first streams and displaying the tile containing the current viewport location. When the viewport location at the receiver changes to include a new tile of the plurality of tiles, retrieving and decoding first streams for the new tile, displaying the decoded content for the changed viewport location, and transmitting the changed viewport location to the source.

Scalability of multi-directional video streaming

Frame packing techniques are disclosed for multi-directional images and video. According to an embodiment, a multi-directional source image is reformatted into a format in which image data from opposing fields of view are represented in respective regions of the packed image as flat image content. Image data from a multi-directional field of view of the source image between the opposing fields of view are represented in another region of the packed image as equirectangular image content. It is expected that use of the formatted frame will lead to coding efficiencies when the formatted image is processed by predictive video coding techniques and the like.

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Hang Yuan