System for editing compressed image sequences

Abstract

This disclosure provides for an image editing system that permits manipulation of compressed image formats without full decompression to the image domain. In particular, an editor manipulates discrete cosine transform ("DCT") coefficients for a dependent frame in a compressed image sequence to incorporate DCT representations of anchor frames upon which the dependent frame depends. Once converted, the frame can simply be reordered in the compressed domain without violating temporal dependencies, subject to bit rate matching. In one embodiment, an image sequence can be cut to leave remaining image frames which are then altered, so as to eliminate temporal dependencies upon eliminated frames. In another embodiment, an image sequence can be processed in the compressed domain for reverse-play. The editor provided by this disclosure permits real-time compressed domain editing applications, with reduced requirements for computational bandwidth.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to the compression of image sequences and in particular provides an editor capable of reordering, slicing or manipulating one or more image sequences without fully decompressing each frame of those image sequences. Background technique [0002] Portions of the disclosure of this patent document contain copyrighted material. The copyright owner has no objection to the reproduction by anyone of the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all rights thereto. [0003] With many technologies today, the current trend in image sequence development and editing is to use digital formats. Even for animated films, editing of image sequences (including image stitching, color manipulation, and special effects) can be done much more precisely by first converting the images to digital format and then making the desired edits to the digital format . Then convert...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

As can be seen, therefore, the described image editing cannot be practically implemented for real-time applications or cannot be implemented on a typical personal computer for many video or Internet applications

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