Sony Corporation

Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.

Nobuyoshi Miyahara

Yoichi Yagasaki

Kazuhisa Hosaka

Motoki Kato

Yuji Ando

Ryohei Okada

Kazunori Yasuda

Osamu Ota

Teruhiko Suzuki

Masami Ogata

Tak Yen Tong

There is provided an encoding apparatus, including an intra-block determination section which determines that a prediction mode of a block is a forced intra-prediction mode, by a frequency based on a priority of each block of an image to be encoded, an encoding section which encodes the block, to which the prediction mode has been determined to be an intra-prediction mode by the intra-block determination section, with the intra-prediction mode, and a transmission section which transmits an encoded result of the image to be encoded obtained by the encoding section, and the prediction mode of the image.

Encoding apparatus, encoding method and program

The invention relates to an associated information adding apparatus and method for adding information associated with image data as an electronic watermark to the image data, and an associated information detecting apparatus and method for detecting the associated information. Particularly, the apparatus includes a memory for storing a unit watermark, a unit watermark repeating section for repeatedly reading the unit watermark from the memory by using a surplus obtained by dividing a pixel position coordinate value of a pixel in a vertical direction and a horizontal direction of an image by a size of a vertical and horizontal repetitive unit of the unit watermark, and an adding section for adding the unit watermark read out from the unit watermark repeating section to information of the image so that the unit watermark is repeated vertically and horizontally on the image. By this, since it is sufficient if the memory stores only the unit watermark, there is an effect that the memory to be used may be small.

Associated information adding apparatus and method associated information detecting apparatus and method and illegal use preventing system

The present invention relates to an information adding apparatus and method for adding information as a watermark to an image. Particularly, the invention is characterized in that a unit watermark pattern having a size corresponding to a small region made of vertical&times;horizontal&equals;M&times;N (M and N are respectively a positive integer) pixels of a part of an image is generated, a repetitive watermark in which the unit watermark pattern from a unit watermark pattern generator is repeated vertically and horizontally is generated, checking is performed against the repetitive watermark, a watermark is added to the image, and in the unit watermark pattern generator, the size of the unit watermark pattern is determined such that at all resolutions expected that resolution conversion for the image is performed, each of the vertical and horizontal sizes of the unit watermark is integer times as large as a size of an encoded block at image encoding. By this, the size of the unit watermark pattern is integer times as large as the size of the encoded block at the image encoding at all resolutions expected that the resolution conversion is performed. Thus, at the time of detection of the associated information, if the resolution of image information is known, it is possible to know, at the resolution, what times as large as the encoded block the unit watermark is, and folding accumulation becomes possible in a unit of the unit watermark of an integer number of encoded blocks

Associated information adding apparatus and method, and associated information detecting apparatus and method

A moving picture compression apparatus in which signal deterioration can be minimized on repeated compression/expansion. The moving picture compression apparatus compresses a moving picture signal having a motion vector multiplexed in its blanking portion and includes a motion vector separator for separating the motion vector multiplexed in the blanking portion of the moving picture signal and components from a difference calculating unit to a motion compensation unit for compressing the moving picture signal using the motion vector.

Moving picture compression/expansion apparatus

The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method of processing an image data, a transmission medium, as well as a recording medium. In detail, in an image data processing of processing an image data in which an accompany information is embedded as a watermark, having a memory which stores the patterns of the watermark, setting a phase of a pattern of the watermark being stored in the memory, to a first phase or a second phase, calculating a first evaluation value corresponding to a pattern of the watermark of the first phase, of the image data inputted, and a second evaluation value corresponding to a pattern of the watermark of the second phase, and comparing the first evaluation value, and a value corresponding to the second evaluation value. As a result, it makes possible to read the accompany information more securely.

Apparatus and method of processing image data, transmission medium, and recording medium

A device and method for processing image data, a transmitting medium, and a recording medium are disclosed. More particularly, in image data processing by which accompanying information is embedded as a watermark into coded image data, a position in a block as a unit of coding the coded image data is detected, a blocked watermark pattern is provided, an area in which an operation relative to a first level value is performed and an area in which an operation relative to a second level value is performed are offered, and a watermark is appended to the coded image data in accordance with the blocked watermark pattern. It is thus possible to easily append a watermark that can be certainly detected.

Device and method for processing image data, transmitting medium, and recording medium

An image encoding method and apparatus, an image decoding method and apparatus, and an image recording medium are provided for suppress the diffusion of the quantizing noise components of the wavelet coefficient or the subband coefficient caused by the band division with the wavelet filter or the subband filter and the quantization, thereby narrowing the area where the ringing takes place. The image encoding method is arranged to detect a motion vector from an input image signal, derive a difference between the input image signal and a predicted image signal, detect a meaningless area from the difference image signal and output information about the meaningless area; subband-convert the difference image signal for outputting a subband coefficient, quantize the subband coefficient, de-quantize the quantized subband coefficient, invert the decoded subband coefficient for outputting a decoded difference image signal, smooth the decoded difference image signal based on the information about the meaningless area, add the predicted image signal to the smoothed difference image signal for producing a decoded image signal, motion-compensate the decoded image signal with the motion vector for outputting the predicted image signal, and output the quantized subband coefficient, the information about the meaningless area, and the motion vector as encoded data. The decoding method takes the substantially reverse operation as the encoding method.

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Kanagawa, Japan

Nobuyoshi Miyahara