Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Oracle International Corporation

Beijing Sifang Automation Co., Ltd.

Beijing Sifang Engineering Co., Ltd.

Xiaoyan Sun

Feng Wu

Shipeng Li

Zhiwei Xiong

Ya-Qin Zhang

Dong Hui Liu

Bing Zeng

Hao Wu

Guobin Shen

Dong Yan Yang

Boris Selitser

Binod Pankajakshy Gangadharan

Terje Strand

Honggang Frank Zhu

Karthic Loganathan

Chunbo Zhu

Gang Duan

Shuquan Zhang

Jingtao Wu

Goubin Shen

Wang Yi

Disclosed herein are exemplary embodiments of methods, apparatus, and systems for performing content-adaptive deblocking to improve the visual quality of video images compressed using block-based motion-predictive video coding. For instance, in certain embodiments of the disclosed technology, edge information is obtained using global orientation energy edge detection ('OEED') techniques on an initially deblocked image. OEED detection can provide a robust partition of local directional features (“LDFs”). For a local directional feature detected in the partition, a directional deblocking filter having an orientation corresponding to the orientation of the LDF can be used. The selected filter can have a filter orientation and activation thresholds that better preserve image details while reducing blocking artifacts. In certain embodiments, for a consecutive non-LDF region, extra smoothing can be imposed to suppress the visually severe blocking artifacts.

Content adaptive deblocking during video encoding and decoding

Disclosed herein are exemplary embodiments of methods, apparatus, and systems for performing content-adaptive deblocking to improve the visual quality of video images compressed using block-based motion-predictive video coding. For instance, in certain embodiments of the disclosed technology, edge information is obtained using global orientation energy edge detection ('OEED') techniques on an initially deblocked image. OEED detection can provide a robust partition of local directional features ('LDFs'). For a local directional feature detected in the partition, a directional deblocking filter having an orientation corresponding to the orientation of the LDF can be used. The selected filter can have a filter orientation and activation thresholds that better preserve image details while reducing blocking artifacts. In certain embodiments, for a consecutive non-LDF region, extra smoothing can be imposed to suppress the visually severe blocking artifacts.

Improved methods and apparatuses are provided for switching of streaming data bitstreams, such as, for example, used in video streaming and other related applications. Some desired functionalities provided herein include random access, fast forward and fast backward, error-resilience and bandwidth adaptation. The improved methods and apparatuses can be configured to increase coding efficiency of and/or reduce the amount of data needed to encode a switching bitstream.

Switching between streaming video bitstreams

Approaches to re-encoding image sets using frequency-domain differences, along with corresponding approaches to reversing the re-encoding of the image sets. For example, a re-encoding tool computes frequency-domain differences between (a) quantized coefficients for a block from encoded data in a first format and (b) quantized coefficients for a prediction of the block. The re-encoding tool entropy codes the frequency-domain differences, producing encoded data in a second format for the compressed images. Such re-encoding can significantly reduce storage cost for previously compressed images, compared to the storage cost for the previously compressed images in the first format, without hurting image quality. Subsequently, the previously compressed images in the first format can be recovered from the encoded data in the second format. Or, the encoded data in the second format can be decoded to reconstruct the images.

Re-encoding image sets using frequency-domain differences

The use of local feature descriptors of an image to generate compressed image data and reconstruct the image using image patches that are external to the image based on the compressed image data may increase image compression efficiency. A down-sampled version of the image is initially compressed to produce an encoded visual descriptor. The local feature descriptors of the image and the encoded visual descriptor are then obtained. A set of differential feature descriptors are subsequently determined based on the differences between the local feature descriptors of the input image and the encoded visual descriptor. At least some of the differential feature descriptors are compressed to produce encoded feature descriptors, which are then combined with the encoded visual feature descriptor produce image data. The image data may be used to select image patches from an image database to reconstruct the image.

Local feature based image compression

In accordance with an embodiment, described herein is a system for real-time communication signaling protocol for use in a telecommunication network and communication in web-only Internet. The protocol facilitates adapting complex signaling on the server-side into simple operations towards the Web. In an embodiment the protocol is used to communicate between a server-side web signaling engine and a client-side communication controller. The client-side communication controller provides a JavaScript API to encapsulate the signaling layer. The web signaling engine includes a controller which terminates communications using the protocol, and normalizes communications into an internal protocol suitable for communication with telecommunications network systems. In an embodiment, the protocol utilizes JSON and a WebSocket connection and can be defined as a WebSocket subprotocol.

Browser/HTML friendly protocol for real-time communication signaling

A state-matrix-independent dynamic process estimation method in real-time for weakly observable measurement nodes without Phasor Measurement Unit(PMU) is only dependent on real-time measurement dynamic data of measurement nodes with PMU and measurement data of Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system in electric power system or state estimation data. According to the SCADA measurement data or state estimation data at some continuous moments, the method utilizes recursive least squares solution to find a linear combination relationship between variation of measurement parameter to be estimated of nodes without PMU and variation of corresponding measurement parameter of nodes with PMU. Using the linear combination of relationship, the dynamic process of measurement nodes without PMU is estimated in real-time. The method provides high estimation precision and meets error requirements of engineering application.

State-matrix-independent dynamic process estimation method in real-time for weakly observable measurement nodes without PMU

Systems and methods provide image compression based on parameter-assisted inpainting. In one implementation of an encoder, an image is partitioned into blocks and the blocks classified as smooth or unsmooth, based on the degree of visual edge content and chromatic variation in each block. Image content of the unsmooth blocks is compressed, while image content of the smooth blocks is summarized by parameters, but not compressed. The parameters, once obtained, may also be compressed. At a decoder, the compressed image content of the unsmooth blocks and the compressed parameters of the smooth blocks are each decompressed. Each smooth block is then reconstructed by inpainting, guided by the parameters in order to impart visual detail from the original image that cannot be implied from the image content of neighboring blocks that have been decoded.

Image compression based on parameter-assisted inpainting

The present motion description technique provides a technique for defining a motion description offline. The motion description can then later be extracted from a multimedia representation and adapted to various multimedia-related applications in a manner that not only reduces the processing for motion estimation but also provides high compression performance during an encoding/transcoding process. The motion description technique employs a motion alignment scheme utilizing a hierarchical model to describe motion data of each macroblock in a coarse-to-fine manner. Motion information is obtained for motion vectors of macroblocks for different partition modes. The resulting motion information is compressed based on correlations among spatially neighboring macroblocks and among partition modes to form the offline motion description.

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Beijing, China

Xiaoyan Sun