Sarnoff Corporation

Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation

Other

Thomson Licensing S.a.

Princeton University

Sharp Corporation

Btg Usa, Inc.

Jungwoo Lee

Chang-Beom Eom

Robert Norman Hurst

Bradley W Dickinson

Ya-Qin Zhang

Stuart J Golin

Tihao Chiang

Dinei Afonso Ferreira Florencio

Zixiang Xiong

Heidi Aarlien Peterson

Jieun Kim

Nurit Binenbaum

Apparatus and methods for growing films of complex layered metal oxides with high stoichiometries and high crystal qualities are provided. The layered complex metal oxides include two or more metals and oxygen and have a layered structure. The methods, which are referred to as hybrid pulsed laser deposition (hybrid PLD), synergistically combine the advantages of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and pulsed laser deposition (PLD) to grow complex metal oxide films that include metals with very different vapor pressures.

Hybrid pulsed laser deposition of complex oxide thin films made from elements having a large vapor pressure mismatch

Methods and systems for forming complex oxide films are provided. Also provided are complex oxide films and heterostructures made using the methods and electronic devices incorporating the complex oxide films and heterostructures. In the methods pulsed laser deposition is conducted in an atmosphere containing a metal-organic precursor to form highly stoichiometric complex oxides.

Metal-organic pulsed laser deposition for stoichiometric complex oxide thin films

A method and apparatus for temporally allocating bits between frames in a coding system such that temporal fluctuations are smoothed out. Namely, a picture quality is monitored on a frame by frame basis. An average distortion measure is derived from previous picture frames and that average is compared to the distortion measure of a current frame, where the result is used to effect bit budget allocation for each frame in an input image sequence.

Apparatus and method for allocating bits temporaly between frames in a coding system

The quantization scale selected for encoding the current frame of a video sequence is selected based on a metric generated based on a set of image data in the video sequence. For example, in MPEG encoding, the linear quantization scale is selected for use in encoding the current frame if the average quantization level used to encode the previously encoded frame is between specified high and low thresholds. Otherwise, the non-linear quantization scale is selected. As a result, medium-difficulty sequences will tend to be encoded using the linear quantization scale, while low- and high-difficulty sequences will tend to be encoded using the non-linear quantization scale. For most normal video sequences, this will result in fewer incidents of panic mode video compression processing and improved picture quality.

Adaptive selection of quantization scales for video encoding

A transcoding method for inserting a visual element into an encoded bit stream with minimal decoding of the encoded bit stream. The transcoding method includes the steps of receiving an encoded bit stream containing a picture, partially decoding a copy of the bit stream, determining if a segment of the picture in the bit stream is affected by the insertion of the visual element, re-encoding the segment if the segment is affected by the insertion of the visual element, and outputting the re-encoded bit stream. The encoded and re-encoded bit streams may be MPEG-encoded bit streams. The re-encoded bit stream may be output using a bit rate control process that randomly selects an initial processing point within the re-encoded bit stream, requantizes the re-encoded bit stream using a modified quantization table, and/or utilizes a slice-level stopping criteria for selectively starting or ending bit rate control.

Method for inserting a visual element into an MPEG bit stream

Flash frames are detected in video streams, for example, by looking for short sequences of one or more frames (or, to be more general, pictures) in which the frames within the sequence are not well-correlated to the frames that immediately precede and follow the flash sequence, where those frames before and after the flash sequence are themselves well-correlated to each other. Video compression processing is then adjusted in some way to handle flash frames in a special manner. For example, since flash frames are poorly correlated to their neighboring frames, it would be best not to make predictions based on such flash frames when encoding other frames. Encoding flash frames as anchor frames (e.g., I or P frames in an MPEG encoder) would be detrimental to those frames that are predicted from the anchor frames. Rather, flash frames are preferably encoded as frames that are never used as references for coding other non-flash frames (e.g., as B frames in an MPEG encoder). As such, any errors in coding flash frames are limited to those frames and do not propagate to other frames in the video sequence.

Detecting and coding flash frames in video data

An input encoded video bitstream conforming to a first DCT-based image compression standard (e.g., MJPEG or DV) is converted into an output encoded video bitstream conforming to a second DCT-based image compression standard (e.g., MPEG) without having to fully decode the first bitstream according to the first image compression standard and without having to fully encode according to the second image compression standard in order to generate the output bitstream. Rather, a partial video decoder of a transcoding system applies steps of the first image compression standard to the input bitstream to generate dequantized DCT coefficient data. A DCT data converter of the transcoding system then processes the dequantized DCT coefficient data in the DCT domain as necessary to enable a partial video encoder of the transcoding system to apply steps of the second image compression standard to the converted DCT coefficient data in order to generate the output bitstream. The processing performed in the DCT domain by the partial video encoder includes motion estimation at block boundaries.

Transcoding using block-based motion vectors

A method and apparatus for adjusting encoding parameters in accordance with a perceptual metric derived from analyzing the contents of an image or video being coded. Namely, the perceptual metric is produced by comparing an original image (or image sequence) to a reconstructed image (or image sequence) and processing the comparison results using a quantitative perceptual difference measure. The difference measure results in a perceptual metric representing the &ldquo;fidelity&rdquo; of the reconstructed image. The metric is used to control the encoding parameters such that the coding of the image can be iteratively adjusted. Furthermore, the method and apparatus is used to provide an automated steerable image compression system.

Apparatus and method for optimizing encoding and performing automated steerable image compression in an image coding system using a perceptual metric

In an image encoding scheme (e.g., MPEG-2) in which two or more different sets of motion vectors are generated for each image that is to be encoded using motion estimation, one or more sets of motion vectors are generated by applying temporal scaling to one or more other sets of motion vectors that may be generated using conventional motion estimation techniques. Using such a temporal interpolation scheme to generate one or more of the sets of motion vectors for each image can greatly reduce the processing load on an image encoding system for motion estimation processing. Local motion estimation can optionally be performed on the estimates generated using temporal interpolation to select final motion vectors, e.g., for use in subsequent image compression processing that relies on motion compensation.

Motion vector generation by temporal interpolation

Video signal compression apparatus generates residues representing pixel value differences between predicted and real pixel values of a current frame of a video signal. Noise reduction circuitry, in the form of nonlinear processing functions, attenuates lower amplitude residues greater than higher amplitude residues and is responsive to a noise estimate. The processed residues are transformed to provide a compressed video data output. The nonlinear processing functions attenuate noise and reduce image distortion.

Noise estimation and reduction apparatus for video signal processing

A method and apparatus for determining an optimal quadtree structure for quadtree-based variable block size (VBS) motion estimation. The method computes the motion vectors for the entire quadtree from the largest block-size to the smallest block-size. Next, the method may optionally select an optimal quantizer scale for each block. The method then compares from 'bottom-up' the sum of the distortion from encoding all sub-blocks or sub-nodes (children) as compared to the distortion from encoding the block or node (parent) from which the subnodes are partitioned from. If the sum of the distortion from encoding the children is greater than that of the parent then the node is 'merged'. Conversely, if the sum of the distortion from encoding the children is less than that of the parent then the node is 'split' and the Lagrangian cost for the parent node is set as the sum of the Lagrangian cost of its children. This step is repeated for the all nodes through every level until an optimal quadtree structure is obtained.

Apparatus and method for quadtree based variable block size motion

In a system for compressing video data, temporally adaptive motion interpolation based upon temporal characteristics of human vision is used for establishing threshold levels relative to the degree of motion as a whole (global motion) between frames. The global motion between successive frames in a group of pictures (GOP) is measured to determine if the motion is less or greater than the established threshold levels for determining the designation of I, P, and B frames, spacing between I and P reference frames, and the number of bits used for each frame, and B frames therebetween.

Method and apparatus for video data compression using temporally

In a system for compressing video data, the degree of global motion between a plurality of successive frames is determined for use in designating and spacing reference frames, relative to the global motion exceeding predetermined thresholds or levels of motion between certain ones of the frames.

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Princeton, NJ, United States of America

Jungwoo Lee