The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 17, 2001
Filed:
Dec. 24, 1996
Thomas R. Gardos, Portland, OR (US);
Karl O. Lillevold, Gjoevik, NO;
Stephen Ing, Beaverton, OR (US);
Doug Brucks, Beaverton, OR (US);
Michael J. Gutmann, Hillsboro, OR (US);
Key Phomsopha, Portland, OR (US);
Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
In a video image compression and transmission system, quantization parameters for a block transform based video compression algorithm can be controlled by a quantizer selector so as to control compressed video frame size. The selection of the appropriate quantization parameter for the nth macroblock of a current frame is based on the cumulative number of compressed bits appearing in the first n-1 macroblocks of a current frame and a previous frame. By controlling the quantization parameter is such a manner, the overall system reacts more quickly to changes in complexity in the video sequence and allocates bits more accurately to different parts of the video frame according to a past history of bit allocation. To efficiently utilize the bandwidth of a transmission medium (such as POTS), a bit count of the contents of the transmit buffer is sent to a buffer regulator in a video controller where it is compared to a low water mark threshold. If the bit count falls below the threshold, an uncompressed video frame is scheduled for compression by a video compressor. By using the low water mark threshold, latency in the overall system is reduced and an efficient use of transmission medium bandwidth is achieved.