Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.p.

General Electric Company

Rca Thomson Licensing Corp.

Other

Rca Licensing Corporation

Sheau-Bao Ng

Hideki Mimura

Hiroaki Unno

Christopher J Cookson

Tetsuya Kitamura

Jay Yogeshwar

Greg B Thagard

Mikhail Tsinberg

Toshinori Odaka

Andrew Drusin Rosen

Faramarz Azadegan

Teiichi Ichikawa

David Lehmann

Hugh E White

Harvey Waldman

Eric Peter Herrmann

Masaru Sakurai

A method and system in which a section of a previously encoded digital bit stream is replaced with another section of encoded video. In order to remove a section of encoded video, it is necessary to determine the beginning and ending points of the encoded video in the digitally encoded bit stream. The addresses of the beginning and ending points of the encoded data cannot be simply looked up but are calculated by summing the bits consumed by each picture, the number of bits of the sequence header of each picture, the number of bits of each Group of Pictures (GOP) header, and all stuff bits. In order to encode the video which is to be inserted in place of the removed video, a process is performed which prevents decoding artifacts from appearing. This is accomplished by determining the last P-picture before the edit point and using it as a reference frame for frames after the edit point. Additionally, a short period of the original video encoded using its original quantizer values is included at the end of the video to be substituted. Alternatively, the encoder may be run so that an earlier encoded reference picture is not used. However, this requires extra bits to maintain picture quality because initial bidirectional frames of the substitute video will use only one reference frame instead of two.

Method and system to replace sections of an encoded video bitstream

An audiovisual encoding system using a multipass video encoder and a plurality of one-pass audio encoders. The number of audio encoders used by the system is equal to the number of audio tracks to be encoded divided by the number of passes required for the video encoding rounded up to the nearest integer, if necessary. The system allows the video encoder and audio encoders to be used at the same time so that the encoding of the video is completed at the same time as the encoding of all audio tracks is completed, using the minimum number of audio encoders.

Audiovisual encoding system with a reduced number of audio encoders

A method and system in which a user manually changes the quality of portions of video frames after the frames have been previously encoded. Regions of one or more frames of video are selected to have an increased quality, a decreased quality, or a quality which should not be altered. After the regions are defined by a user, the frame of video is digitally re-encoded and inserted into the digitally encoded data stream in place of the previously encoded data. In order to easily remove a previously encoded frame from the data steam and replace it with a newly encoded frame having regions of quality defined by the user, it is preferable to have the newly encoded frame consume the same number of bits as the previously encoded frame. Accordingly, if the user desires a region of a frame to have an increased quality, the extra bits necessary to provide the increased quality must be taken from other areas of the frame. This is accomplished by an automatic process which is transparent to the user. Additionally, if the user wants to change the quality of an object for a series of video frames, the user can mark a region in a first frame and a corresponding region in a last frame and the system will automatically adjust the quality of the region as the region moves through the series of video frames.

Method and system for a user to manually alter the quality of previously

A system for deinterlacing encoded video data includes a demultiplexer for receiving the encoded video data and producing motion information and compressed video data corresponding to the encoded video data. A motion compensated predictor generates predicted image data based on the motion information corresponding to the encoded video data. A variable length decoder decodes the compressed video data corresponding to the encoded video data to produce residual data. An adder combines the residual data and the predicted image data to generate an interlace field and a memory stores picture data corresponding to the interlace field. A controller processes the motion information and generates motion vectors and a control signal corresponding to the motion information. A motion compensated deinterlacer manipulates the picture data corresponding to the interlace fields from the memory according to the motion vectors and the control signal to generate a corresponding deinterlace picture.

System for deinterlacing digitally compressed video and method

A method and system in which a user manually changes the quality of specific time periods of encoded video. After the automatic encoding of video into a compressed digital format, a person editing the encoded video reviews the quality of the video and manually indicates that the quality of specific time periods of the video is to be altered. As the digital storage medium such as an optical disc which stores the encoded video has a finite storage capacity, the total number of bits for the encoded video and the quality of the video is limited. Consequently, in order to increase the quality for one time period, bits must be taken from other time periods. After the editor assigns the qualities to different time periods, a percentage of bits is removed from the time sequences and placed into a bit pool. The new number of bits for the various time periods are calculated using an exponential function and the bits in the bit pool are proportionally distributed to the video frames. The frames must then be checked and possibly adjusted to assure that underflow of the video buffer will not occur. After the underflow checking procedure, the video is re-encoded with an adjusted quantization in accordance with a quantizer model which will result in a picture having the calculated number of bits and a quality in accordance with the user's selection.

Method and system for a user to manually alter the quality of a

In a system for coding and decoding a digital television signal, a signal representing residual image information is transformed into plural subband signals representing vertical and horizontal frequencies, and quantized. To mitigate the effects of transmission channel errors, the quantized subband signals are scrambled by line shuffling before being data compressed prior to transmission. Inverse operations including decoding, line re-shuffling, dequantization and subband synthesis occur at a receiver.

Error control apparatus for a digital video signal processing system

A receiver for receiving block coded HDTV compressed digital video signals decimates the data in each block to produce NTSC resolution images but with a significant savings in receiver hardware.

Lower resolution HDTV receivers

Apparatus in a receiver includes error detection circuitry for detecting segments of transmitted encoded image data having non correctable errors. Further apparatus generates error maps for respective frames in the transmitted sequence. Responsive to the data in the error maps, known good image data or interpolated image data is substituted for data corresponding to the segments containing errors. Error indications for anchor frames, from which predictive frames are encoded, are propagated into error maps corresponding to the predictive encoded frames to accommodate error concealment of errors that may propagate into successive dependently encoded frame data.

Error concealment apparatus for a compressed video signal processing

In a video decompression system for decompressing compressed image data wherein odd and even fields of video signal are independently compressed in sequences of intraframe and interframe compression modes and interleaved for transmission, the odd and even fields are independently decompressed. During intervals when valid decompressed odd/even field data is not available, even/odd field data is substituted for the unavailable odd/even field data. Independently decompressing the even and odd fields of data and substituting the opposite field of data for unavailable data may be used to advantage to reduce image display latency during system start-up and channel changes.

Video signal decompression apparatus for independently compressed even

A system for synchronizing first and second video signals which are to be combined is disclosed. The second signal is data compressed digital signal containing macro blocks of composite data preceded by a field sync flag synchronized with the field rate of the first signal. Each macro block contains a video block including a plurality of image line blocks. Each line block contains multiplexed video data such as luminance and chrominance information preceded by a marker flag. The flag preceding the first line block in a video block is a field flag which identifies the beginning of a scanning field associated with that video block. The flags preceding other line blocks in that video block identify the other line blocks respectively. Each flag contains a unique data preamble which identifies the associated line block. Illustratively, field flag data includes unique header, field number, and 'performance index' data for controlling data quantization. Line block flag data includes unique header, line block number and performance index data.

Apparatus for synchronizing main and auxiliary video signals

A digital television transmitter has a buffer that receives a low resolution low pass filtered signal. A high resolution high pass filtered signal is applied to the buffer only when the buffer can accept it without overflowing in accordance with a threshold signal. A controller provides a control signal that varies in accordance with an interframe difference motion indicator signal and the inverse of the occupancy of the buffer. A digital television receiver receives a digital television picture signal and preferably a transmitter buffer occupancy state signal. A low resolution low pass filtered signal is applied to an adder. A high resolution high pass filtered signal is applied to the adder in accordance with the buffer state and motion indication. The transmitter and receiver are useful in video teleconferencing.

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Cranbury, NJ, United States of America

Sheau-Bao Ng