Nec Corporation

Nec Home Electronics, Inc.

Yosuke Takashima

Masanori Mizuno

Masashi Sugiura

Schichirou Tsuruta

Masaki Fujimoto

An image area determining apparatus acquires a multi-value image to determine to which one of a picture area and a character area an image signal of the multi-value image belongs. A density detecting unit detects whether or not a density value of the multi-value image is within a range between two preset density threshold values. A density variation amount detecting unit detects whether or not a variation amount of the density value of the multi-value image is less than a preset density variation threshold value. The determining apparatus determines that the multi-value image is related to a picture area when the density value of the received multi-value image is within the range between the two density threshold values and the density value variation amount of the multi-value image is less than the density variation threshold value.

Image area determining apparatus

An automatic music transcription method and system for generating a muscial score from an input acoustic signal. The acoustic signal may include vocal songs, vocal humming, and music from musical instruments. The system comprises means for extracting pitch information and power information from the input acoustic signal, for correcting the pitch information based on the deviation of the acoustic signal relative to an absolute musical scale, for dividing the acoustic signal into a set of single-sound segments using the corrected pitch information, dividing the acoustic signal into a second set of single-sound segments this time using changes in the power information, for dividing the acoustic signal in still greater detail using information contained in both previous segmentations, for associating each segment with a musical interval of an absolute musical scale, and for determining single-sounds segments depending on whether or not the musical intervals of adjacent segments are identical, for determining the key of the acoustic signal, for correcting the placement of the segments on the musical scale of the determined key using the pitch information, for determining the time and tempo of the acoustic signal using this placement, and for compiling musical score data using the determined musical scale, sound length, key, time, and tempo of the acoustic signal.

Method for automatically transcribing music and apparatus therefore

An adaptive pseudo halftone generator which achieves high resolution and faithful rendering of gray scales or gradations even when video image data comprise a mixture of alphanumeric characters and other symbols represented by two-level signals and photographs and like images represented by multi-level signals. A value indicative of a degree of continuity of tones of an input video signal is computed to control the threshold value adapted for dot pattern representation on the basis of the computed value.

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Tokyo, Japan

Yosuke Takashima