Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Jay Senior

Stephen Estrop

Doron J Holan

Kenneth D Ray

Alexandre Vicktorovich Grigorovitch

Firdosh Kersy Bhesania

Kirt A Debique

John E Elsbree

Sohail Baig Mohammed

David R Blythe

Gurpratap Virdi

John Charles Dunn

Gareth Alan Howell

Gregory David Swedberg

Anuj Bharat Gosalia

Jonathan Marshall Cain

Joseph Cox Ballantyne

Hirofumi Yamamoto

Gerardo Bermudez

Ryan James D'Aurelio

Bradley L Carpenter

Kan Qiu

Miguel M Valdez

Jason A Schroeder

John (Mingtzong) Lee

Tim Cowley

Video frame buffers are controlled using a sequence of new-frame-indicators (e.g., FLIP) and no-new-frame-indicators (e.g., NOFLIP) in a frame indicator queue that is accessed with each display refresh. Video samples are loaded into a chain of video frame buffers that is 'rotated' during the vertical blanking signal of the display to swap an old frame buffer out for a new frame buffer. The rotations of the frame buffer chain are controlled based on the frame indicators in the frame indicator queue to present new video samples to the display in a regular pattern, thereby providing smooth video playback.

Frame buffer control for smooth video display

Compositing functionality is provided in the form of an application program interface (API) that applications can utilize to composite images on video data that is to be rendered. In at least some embodiments, this functionality is exposed in a multimedia pipeline towards the end of the multimedia pipeline, such as at or by a renderer component. A set of methods exposed by the API permit an application to create and manage image compositing.

Compositing external images into a multimedia rendering pipeline

A method, interface, and medium are provided for causing a computer to respond to input based on the source of the input. The computer responds to identical input according to a device that generated the input. The method includes determining information about a receiving component that received the data and using that information to determine the source of input. The source of data input is coupled with the input to initiate a response by the computer. The response can be tailored to how the data was received.

Interface for determining the source of user input

An image of a first aspect ratio is modified to be displayed in a display area with a second aspect ratio. In doing so, the aspect ratio of some of the image content is approximately maintained, yet the aspect ratio of other areas of the image content is stretched so that the entire resulting image fills the display area. This may be done by either using texture mapping to map a strip of content (treated as a texture) into a strip of the destination image. It may also be done by modifying the image content to an intermediate image, which is then uniformly stretched to fill the intended aspect ratio. The areas of image content closest to one or more focus areas is approximately maintained, while other areas are allowed more distortion.

Aspect ratio conversion of video content

A method for rebalancing bandwidth allocations to peripheral and other devices, particularly for isochronous communications, connected to a computer system via a bus in order to accommodate bandwidth requirements of a newly added device or newly launched application is described. The method is particularly useful in the context of buses such as the Universal Serial Bus (USB) and the IEEE 1394 bus (FireWire) which allow a plurality of devices to be connected to a computer system and even be powered by the bus. The method utilizes a Policy to identify preferred configurations and, furthermore, extends the USB and other standards to specify devices that can dynamically respond to commands to change their bandwidth to another setting.

Method and system for managing bandwidth on a master-slave bus

A manager component for managing input from legacy and non-legacy devices in a similar manner is disclosed. An inventive manager component receives input from both non-legacy input drivers for non-legacy input devices, and legacy input drivers for legacy input devices. The manager component provides the input to application programs that desirably have previously registered to receive input from one or more types of input devices. The application programs receive this input without directly communicating with the drivers.

Manager component for managing input from existing serial devices and added serial and non-serial devices in a similar manner

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Jay Senior