Advanced Micro Devices Corporation

Other

Fastman, Inc.

Polycom, Inc.

Michael R Tucker

Geoffrey S Strongin

Yi Liu

Weiping Li

Eran Decker

Aviv Eisenberg

John Raymond Nicol

A system and method provide a rule-based technique for adapting a videoconferencing system to current conditions of a conference session, automatically converting the session from one conferencing technique to another, based on those current conditions. Rules may involve criteria including number of participants, ability to use a common codex, among others. An escalation module can be used to manage the transition between one type of conference session and another. If a condition occurs that causes transitioning the conference from one type to another, when that condition no longer applies, the conference may automatically transition back to the original conferencing type.

System and method for real-time adaptation of a conferencing system to current conditions of a conference session

A vertically adjustable garment hanger. The vertically adjustable garment hanger includes a supporting hook having a curved upper end and a lower end. The first end of a vertical suspending member is connected to the lower end of the supporting hook. An end stop is disposed on the second end of the vertical suspending member. A garment retaining body supports clothing thereon and includes an aperture. The vertical suspending member is inserted through the aperture in sliding engagement therewith. An adjustable support member is slidably disposed on the vertical suspending member. The adjustable support member allows the distance between the supporting hook and garment retaining to be changed so that users can hang clothing from a horizontal supporting rod at a desired height.

Vertically adjustable garment hanger

The removable dewatering device is adapted for use in a retention basin, and filters debris from water passing there through. The present invention has an inner filter and an outer filter. The current conventional process for cleaning a retention basin filter device of debris is time consuming and arduous. Usually, retention basins must be completely drained in order to clean the filtration devices. The present invention is removed then cleaned and maintained while the retention basin is full of water, and requires considerably less effort and expense for maintenance and cleaning.

Removable dewatering device

A walking aid device for assisting a user to walk by presenting a true 3-D obstacle that is automatically activated during normal use of a cane or walking support, to which the device is attached proximal to the floor end, and during use when in an extended position is non-parallel to the floor surface, is perceived by the user to be an obstacle over which the foot on the same side of the user's body must step. A method of use providing for attaching the device to the cane or walking support and using it in a cycle that produces a walking-type motion for the user.

Walking aid device and method of using same

A video decoder system affords playback of video information corresponding to a compressed video bitstream which demands less processor performance than would be demanded for decoding the compressed video bitstream itself. One embodiment includes preprocessing and partially decoding the compressed video bitstream, and retaining the partially-decoded information for subsequent playback. In another embodiment the compressed video bitstream is preprocessed and information useful for increasing the processing speed is retained for subsequent playback. Either embodiment may be used alone, or both may be used together. The information useful for increasing the processing speed which is retained for subsequent playback may be retained by creating an intermediate video bitstream which may include partially decoded information from the compressed video bitstream as well as the information useful for increasing the processing speed of the video information. The intermediate video bitstream may be stored on a system hard disk where it may be read much faster than if stored on a CD-ROM and may be deleted when not needed.

Generation of an intermediate video bitstream from a compressed video

A method and apparatus for decoding variable length code (VLC) data employ a hybrid technique of parsing short-length VLC codes using a binary tree or binary search procedure and parsing longer VLC codes using a table lookup procedure. This technique includes the steps of accessing a plurality of bits of coded bitstream data, bit testing a preselected number N first bits of the plurality of bitstream bits and determining whether the N first bits include a complete VLC code. If the N first bits include a complete VLC code, a VLC code is decoded in accordance with a result of the bit testing step. If the N first bits do not include a complete VLC code, a VLC code is decoded from a lookup table to a table element addressed by the bits of coded bitstream data.

Method and apparatus for hybrid VLC bitstream decoding

A video decoding system examines a block of DCT coefficients prior to computation of an inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT) to determine the number of nonzero coefficients. A plurality of IDCT engines are available in the video system including an IDCT engine utilizing fewer computations for a sparse picture and an IDCT engine utilizing fewer computations for a nonsparse picture. The video decoding system selects an IDCT engine to minimize the number of computations performed and to thereby reduce the computational burden of IDCT transformation.

Method and apparatus for improved video decompression by selection of

A video decoding system that selectively arranges video information within a memory to correspond to macroblocks of video information. Such a system advantageously increases the efficiency of processing video information when decoding compressed video information.

Performance of video decompression by using block oriented data

A video decoding apparatus and method greatly reduces the computational burden of video decoding by processing several pixels in parallel, thereby reducing the computational load by a factor approximating the number of pixels processed at one time.

Method and apparatus for improved video decompression by prescaling of

A method of adaptively performing motion compensation in a video processing apparatus is provided. The video processing apparatus processes macroblocks of compressed video information. Some of these macroblocks have motion vectors associated therewith. The method is conveniently implemented on a general purpose computer in one embodiment. In accordance with the disclosed method, the performance of the processor in the computer is monitored and a measurement of this performance is made. A threshold dependent on the measured processor performance is then set. For those macroblocks which have motion vectors associated therewith, the magnitude of the motion vector is determined. If the magnitude of the motion vector of a particular macroblock exceeds the threshold, then motion compensation is performed on that macroblock. However, if the magnitude of the motion vectors or motion vectors associated with a particular macroblock do not exceed the threshold, then no motion compensation is performed. The processor is thus relieved from the computational burden of performing motion compensation on a significant number of macroblocks.

Method and apparatus for adaptively performing motion compensation in a

A decoding system stores frequently-occurring DCT coefficient blocks in a memory and stores pre-computed spatial domain kernels which correspond to the stored DCT coefficient blocks. The video system examines a block of DCT coefficients prior to computation of an inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT) to determine whether the block is substantially similar to a stored frequently-occurring DCT coefficient block. If so, the spatial domain kernel corresponding to the frequently-occurring DCT block is utilized in the decoded picture, bypassing computation of the IDCT.

Method and apparatus for improved video decompression by

A video system examines the transform domain content of various spatially related blocks in a compressed video bitstream to determine whether predetermined types of similarities exist between multiple blocks. When certain selected similarities are found, the video system spatially combines the blocks in a predetermined manner. In some embodiments, DCT coefficients of a plurality of blocks are averaged to form one averaged block and the averaged block is inverse discrete cosine transformed. The averaged and IDCT transformed block is written to the display at the position of each of the averaged blocks. In some embodiments, a representative block of a plurality of DCT coefficient blocks is selected and inverse discrete cosine transformed. The selected and IDCT transformed block is written to the display at the position of each of the plurality of blocks.

Method and apparatus for improved video decompression by selective

An video decoder system, such as for use with MPEG video compression, uses a previous B-frame as an additional prediction source for the current B-frame. In one embodiment, a given block within a current B-frame 'N' reuses IDCT result terms from the previous B-frame 'N-1' if they are determined to be 'similar enough' to the anticipated IDCT result terms which would otherwise need to be computed. For a given block, each of the 'M' lowest-frequency DCT coefficients for B-frame 'N' and B-frame 'N-1' are respectively compared: if they differ by less than a similarity threshold value, then the IDCT result terms from the previous B-frame 'N-1' are reused without further computation. The similarity threshold may be adaptively adjusted to reduce the computational burden of video decompression, while affording a gradual degradation of picture quality, rather than wholesale skipping of entire frames.

Method and apparatus for improved video decompression using previous

A DCT VLC decoding method substantially lessens the computational burden of picture dequantization. The method of decoding variable length code (VLC) data includes the step of receiving a bitstream sequence organized into a hierarchy of levels including, in order, a sequence layer, a group of pictures layer, a picture layer, a slice layer, a macroblock layer, and a block layer. In the sequence layer, the method defines a quantization matrix. In a macroblock layer, the method defines a quantizer scale parameter in the macroblock layer, multiplies the quantization matrix times the quantizer scale parameter and stores the product in a quantization multiplication factor. In the block layer, the method parses an encoded data bitstream to detect a VLC code in the block layer and dequantizes the VLC code by multiplying the VLC code times the quantization multiplication factor.

Method and apparatus for prestoring dequantization information for DCT

A method of pixel averaging is disclosed which advantageously employs a relatively low number of registers, relatively few memory accesses and a relatively low number of steps. A first register is loaded with a first sequence of pixel values which are to be averaged with a second sequence of pixel values loaded into a second register. The pixel values of the first sequence are stored in respective segments of the first register and the pixel values of the second sequence are stored in respective segments of the second register. The pixel values in the first and second registers are shifted to the right by one. The most significant bit of each of the segments of the first register and the most significant bit of each of the segments of the second register are masked. First masked quotients are thus obtained in each of the segments of the first register and second masked quotients are thus obtained in each of the segments of the second register. The first masked quotients in the segments of the first register are added to respective second masked quotients in the second register to obtain a plurality of pixel value averages.

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

Michael R Tucker