538 results about "MPEG-2" patented technology

Disclosed is a system for allowing on-demand delivery of data, such as MPEG-2 compressed video data, to a subscriber from a content server. The system utilizes a managed IP network that is coupled to the one or more content servers that allows the content servers to deliver data such as video, audio, and textual data with a guaranteed quality of service that is at least as good as broadcast quality service. The managed IP network is connected to a head end or other local cable service provider where video is delivered locally to subscribers. The IP transport data is translated to MPEG transport data, multiplexed onto an MPEG transport system, digitally modulated onto an rf carrier and up-converted to a specific frequency channel. The signal is then applied to the cable for delivery to the subscriber. Upstream signaling occurs through a set top box or computer that is connected to the cable and subsequently to a digital modulator / demodulator and ISP to a managed IP network 66. Low band signals can also be transmitted from the content servers back to the set top box or computer indicating confirmation of an order. Also, control signals such as stop, rewind, fast-forward, and slow can be transmitted back to the content server to control the transmission of data from the content server to the subscriber.

A system and method for displaying still video images related to video content in an interactive broadcast television system. The system and method of the present invention may also be used for simulating an Internet home page on an interactive television system. The present invention thus supports hyperlinked web-like navigational capabilities in an interactive television system. According to the method of the present invention, the video delivery system provides or broadcasts one or more audio / video channels each comprising video content and also provides or broadcasts at least one still image channel comprising a plurality of still video images, preferably MPEG-2 compressed still images. The user or viewer can select options displayed on the television screen to view desired information. When the set top box receives user input selecting an option to view one of the linked still images, the set top box captures the requested image from the still image broadcast channel, stores the image in memory, and displays the captured still video image corresponding to the selection. The still image being displayed may have associated interactive program content for displaying further selections, wherein these selections may be for viewing other images or content, for ordering information, or purchasing products. The user can thus selectively navigate between the video content and stills in a web-like hyperlinked fashion. In one embodiment, when a user is navigating through still images, the television program or video content which was being viewed is displayed in a small window overlaid on the still image being displayed. Also, when the set top box captures a requested image from the still image broadcast channel, the set top box preferably also pre-caches or pre-loads other related still images based on the probabilty that these related images will be subsequently requested by the user. The invention also includes an embodiment which provides user requested still images "on demand" on a dedicated "search" channel.

A system and method for generating trick play video streams, such as fast forward and fast reverse video streams, from an MPEG compressed normal play bitstream. The system receives a compressed normal play bitstream and filters the bitstream by extracting and saving only portions of the bitstream. The system preferably extracts I-frames and sequence headers, including all weighting matrices, from the MPEG bitstream and stores this information in a new file. The system then assembles or collates the filtered data into the proper order to generate a single assembled bitstream. The system also ensures that the weighting matrixes properly correspond to the respective I-frames. This produces a bitstream comprised of a plurality of sequence headers and I-frames. This assembled bitstream is MPEG-2 decoded to produce a new video sequence which comprises only one out of every X pictures of the original, uncompressed normal play bitstream. This output picture stream is then re-encoded with respective MPEG parameters desired for the trickplay stream, thus producing a trickplay stream that is a valid MPEG encoded stream, but which includes only one of every X frames. The present invention thus generates compressed trick play video streams which require reduced storage and reduced data transfer bandwidth requirements.

A video, audio and graphics system uses multiple transport processors to receive in-band and out-of-band MPEG Transport streams, to perform PID and section filtering as well as DVB and DES decryption and to de-multiplex them. The system processes the PES into digital audio, MPEG video and message data. The system is capable of decoding multiple MPEG SLICEs concurrently. Graphics windows are blended in parallel, and blended with video using alpha blending. During graphics processing, a single-port SRAM is used equivalently as a dual-port SRAM. The video may include both analog video, e.g., NTSC / PAL / SECAM / S-video, and digital video, e.g., MPEG-2 video in SDTV or HDTV format. The system has a reduced memory mode in which video images are reduced in half in horizontal direction only during decoding. The system is capable of receiving and processing digital audio signals such as MPEG Layer 1 and Layer 2 audio and Dolby AC-3 audio, as well as PCM audio signals. The system includes a memory controller. The system includes a system bridge controller to interface a CPU with devices internal to the system as well as peripheral devices including PCI devices and I / O devices such as RAM, ROM and flash memory devices. The system is capable of displaying video and graphics in both the high definition (HD) mode and the standard definition (SD) mode. The system may output an HDTV video while converting the HDTV video and providing as another output having an SDTV format or another HDTV format.

To reduce bandwidth of non-scalable MPEG-2 coded video, certain non-zero AC DCT coefficients for the 8x8 blocks are removed from the MPEG-2 coded video. In one implementation, high-frequency AC DCT coefficients are removed at the end of the coefficient scan order. This method requires the least computation and is most desirable if the reduced-bandwidth video is to be spatially sub-sampled. In another implementation, the smallest-magnitude AC DCT coefficients are removed. This method may produce an undesirable increase in the frequency of occurrence of escape sequences in the (run, level) coding. This frequency can be reduced by retaining certain non-zero AC DCT coefficients that are not the largest magnitude coefficients, and by increasing a quantization scale to reduce the coefficient levels. The reduced-bandwidth video can be used for a variety of applications, such as browsing for search and play-list generation, bit stream scaling for splicing, and bit-rate adjustment for services with limited resources and for multiplexing of transport streams.

Transform coefficients for blocks of pixels in an original picture are quantized to produce respective sets of quantization indices for the blocks of pixels. The quantization indices for at least some of the blocks are produced by using a quantization step size that is not uniform within each block. Largest magnitude quantization indices are selected from the respective sets of quantization indices for (run, level) encoding to produce the (run, level) encoded picture. For example, MPEG-2 coded video includes a set of non-zero AC discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients for 8x8 blocks of pixels. For scaling the MPEG-2 coded video, non-zero AC DCT coefficients are removed from the MPEG-2 coded video to produce reduced-quality MPEG-2 coded video that includes no more than a selected number of largest magnitude quantization indices for the non-zero AC DCT coefficients for each 8x8 block.

Original-quality MPEG coded video is processed to produce reduced-quality MPEG coded video for trick mode operation by removing non-zero AC DCT coefficients from the 8×8 blocks of I-frames of the MPEG coded video to produce I-frames of reduced-quality MPEG coded video, and inserting freeze frames in the reduced-quality MPEG coded video. Preferably, the coded video is stored in a main file, a fast-forward file and a fast-reverse file. The fast forward file and the fast reverse files contain reduced-quality I frames corresponding to original-quality I frames in the main file. A reading of the main file produces an MPEG transport stream for an audio-visual presentation at a normal rate, a reading of the fast-forward file produces an MPEG transport stream of the audio-visual presentation in a forward direction at a fast rate, and a reading of the fast-reverse file produces an MPEG transport stream of the audio-visual presentation in a reverse direction at a fast rate. Preferably, the files share a volume that includes at least one GOP index associating the corresponding I frames of the files.

In a one way broadcast digital video network, Internet HTML Web page data is formatted to fit within a standard MPEG-2 data packet structure, and multiplexed along with other MPEG-2 digital video signals for transport within a multiple channel digital video system. In particular, the headend server broadcasts a rotating carousel comprising an ensemble of Web pages in HTML format. The rotating carousel contains both broadcast Web pages and simulcast Web pages and a control map permitting the viewer to navigate among the HTML Web pages of the rotating carousel. In particular, the control map contains the locations of the HTML Web pages in the rotating carousel that correspond to broadcast Web pages. The control map further contains the locations of the HTML Web pages in the rotating carousel that correspond to simulcast Web pages. The control map is updated and rebroadcast whenever there is a change at the start, middle or end of a broadcast video program, thereby synchronizing the simulcast Web pages to the multiple channel broadcast digital video programs.

A method, protocol and apparatus for transporting Advanced Video Coding (AVC) content, e.g., using MPEG-2 systems is disclosed. Specifically, the present method is related to the carriage of various flavors of AVC streams in a uniform fashion over MPEG-2 systems (e.g., both transport and program streams). AVC coding mandates only the VCL (video coding layer) elements and all other elements such as parameter sets, timing data and display parameters are optional in the in-band AVC stream. As all of these elements are required by MPEG-2 systems and for conformance verification of AVC streams, the present invention discloses MPEG-2 system specific tools and / or constraints to generate the optional elements that are not present in the in-band AVC stream.

A system and method for a seamless splicing / spot insertion strategy for MPEG-2 digital video / audio transport stream with no previously encoded information. This strategy, considering the time dependency between MPEG-2 frames, results in a new stream with smooth transition from a main stream to a spot stream without any encoded mark increasing possibilities for utilization of MPEG-2 contents. This strategy further facilitates local and remote switching (like local advertisement insertion) and produces successful decoding and presentation of all MPEG-2 packets around the splicing point. It takes into account several kinds of MPEG-2 related discontinuities: transport header continuity counter gaps, temporal reference discontinuity for frame presentation and PCR / PTS / DTS discontinuities.

Video frames of original video data are sampled with arbitrary time interval and size, and thumbnail frames are obtained. As thumbnail information concerning these frames, information on frame number of the original video frame corresponding each of the thumbnail frames and size of each thumbnail frame are described. Further, scene change information on the original video frames or intra-frame frame change value information are described altogether as additional information, and temporal / spatial thumbnail meta-data is obtained. The meta-data is associated with original video data, and a database is constructed. Then, the meta-data is employed, thereby performing typical frame display of original video data or variable speed reproduction. In this manner, even with a device with its low CPU capability, typical frame display or variable speed reproduction is performed for compressed and encoded video data such as MPEG-2, and the contents of video is checked, and retrieval is easily performed.

A video and graphics system has a reduced memory mode in which video images are reduced in half in horizontal direction during decoding. The video and graphics system includes a video decoder for decoding MPEG-2 video data. The video images may not be downscaled in the horizontal direction when no bi-directionally predicted pictures are used. The video and graphics system may output an HDTV video while converting the HDTV video and providing as another output having an SDTV format or another HDTV format. The output having an SDTV format may be recorded using a video cassette recorder (VCR) while the HDTV video is being displayed.

An apparatus and method for inserting and extracting value added data in a TS (Transport Stream)-based MPEG-2 system is provided to improve the efficiency of the TS-based MPEG-2 system. A transport packet of a transport stream for transmission is checked to determine if it includes a stuffing byte field, on the basis of a header of the transport packet. If the transport packet includes a stuffing byte field, the value added data is inserted into the stuffing byte field, and the resulting transport packet is outputted. On the other hand, a transport packet of a received transport stream is checked to determine if it includes a stuffing byte field, on the basis of a header of the transport packet. If the transport packet includes a stuffing byte field, the value added data inserted in the stuffing byte field is extracted from the transport packet.

The systems disclosed here provide a complete standards-based end-to-end scalable system for storage, delivery and in-home distribution of digital content over IP networks using standard protocols such as Real-time Transport Protocol (“RTP”) or IP-encapsulated MPEG-2 Transport Stream, or traditional MPEG-2 networks. Mechanisms are provided for receiving content from one security domain, re-encrypting that content uniquely for a receiving device, persistently storing that content, and playing back that content at a later time to and within another security domain. The systems also provide the ability to stream the persistently-stored content from the initial receiving device to another device that has been authenticated as part of a, e.g., home network. This allows a media server, e.g., a dual-tuner set-top box (“STB”) with hard drive, to deliver recorded content to any TV in the house by streaming to media clients such as STBs.

This invention relates to methods of feature extraction from MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 compressed video sequences. The spatio-temporal compression complexity of video sequences is evaluated for feature extraction by inspecting the compressed bitstream and the complexity is used as a descriptor of the spatio-temporal characteristics of the video sequence. The spatio-temporal compression complexity measure is used as a matching criterion and can also be used for absolute indexing. Feature extraction can be accomplished in conjunction with scene change detection techniques and the combination has reasonable accuracy and the advantage of high simplicity since it is based on entropy decoding of signals in compressed form and does not require computationally expensive inverse Discrete Cosine Transformation (DCT).

An escape-code complexing method based on H.264 multi-path video includes applying fast conversion means of MPEG-2 to H.264 code and utilizing H.264 macro-block mode to select relativity to MPEG-2 motion compensation residual error as well as utilizing motion compensation residual error and MB mode as well as mapped H.264 macro-block mode obtained by MPEG-2 decoding to synthesize TS stream and to input multi-path MPEG-2 program stream to escape code complex server by SI interface through PCI bus and outputting escape-coded and complexed single H.264 video stream through PCI bus in ASI interface mode.

A video and graphics system processes video data including both analog video, e.g., NTSC / PAL / SECAM / S-video, and digital video, e.g., MPEG-2 video in SDTV or HDTV format. The video and graphics system includes a video decoder, which is capable of concurrently decoding multiple SLICEs of MPEG-2 video data. The video decoder includes multiple row decoding engines for decoding the MPEG-2 video data. Each row decoding engine concurrently decodes two or more rows of the MPEG-2 video data. The row decoding engines have a pipelined architecture for concurrently decoding multiple rows of MPEG-2 video data. The video decoder may be integrated on an integrated circuit chip with other video and graphics system components such as transport processors for receiving one or more compressed data streams and for extracting video data, and a video compositor for blending processed video data with graphics.

This invention discloses an intra-frame complexity based dynamic GOP system and method for the encoding of MPEG-2 video streams. The present invention may be used as a rate control tool to improve video quality. The selective insertion of low complexity I frames in scene changes such as fades is disclosed. It is disclosed that the selective use of I frames in certain scene change situations can improve encoder performance, particularly when encoding at a low bit rate.

A video, audio and graphics system uses multiple transport processors to receive in-band and out-of-band MPEG Transport streams, to perform PID and section filtering as well as DVB and DES decryption and to de-multiplex them. The system processes the PES into digital audio, MPEG video and message data. The system is capable of decoding multiple MPEG SLICEs concurrently. Graphics windows are blended in parallel, and blended with video using alpha blending. During graphics processing, a single-port SRAM is used equivalently as a dual-port SRAM. The video may include both analog video, e.g., NTSC / PAL / SECAM / S-video, and digital video, e.g., MPEG-2 video in SDTV or HDTV format. The system has a reduced memory mode in which video images are reduced in half in horizontal direction only during decoding. The system is capable of receiving and processing digital audio signals such as MPEG Layer 1 and Layer 2 audio and Dolby AC-3 audio, as well as PCM audio signals. The system includes a memory controller. The system includes a system bridge controller to interface a CPU with devices internal to the system as well as peripheral devices including PCI devices and I / O devices such as RAM, ROM and flash memory devices. The system is capable of displaying video and graphics in both the high definition (HD) mode and the standard definition (SD) mode. The system may output an HDTV video while converting the HDTV video and providing as another output having an SDTV format or another HDTV format.

A disparity prediction stage and a motion prediction stage predict a disparity vector and a motion vector by extending a MPEG-2 structure into a view axis and using spatial / temporal correlation. A disparity / motion compensation stage compensates an image reconstructed by the disparity prediction stage and the motion prediction stage by using a sub-pixel compensation method. A residual image encoding stage performs an encoding to provide a better visual quality and a three-dimensional effect of an original image and the reconstructed image. A bit rate control stage controls a bit rate for assigning an effective amount of bit to each frame on the reconstructed image according to a bit rate. An entropy encoding stage generates a bit stream on multi-view video source data according to the bit rate.

A method / system of transcoding an MPEG 2 / 4 bit stream into an H.264 format, handles an input MPEG 2 / 4 bit stream in a decoder, and identifies certain data in the input bit stream for reuse in the H.264 format; and, reuses the identified data in a re-encoder with assistance from a mapping module in transcoding by converting the input bit stream into an output H.264 format. The identified data includes information at a macrolevel and information at a picture level. The information at the macrolevel might comprise additional stages incorporated in the re-encoder module including a Mapping Process stage, a Sub Pixel Refinement stage, a Mode Selection stage to choose from Intra, Inter or Skip modes, followed by the standard H.264 encoding loop and the Entropy Coding Block. The information at the picture level might include; a) average quantizer of frame, and, b) total bits per frame.

A digital broadcasting transmission and / or reception system having an improved reception performance and a signal-processing method thereof. A digital broadcasting transmitter comprises a TRS encoder for to TRS-encode an MPEG-2 transmission stream having null data for inserting an SRS data and a TRS parity at predetermined positions, randomizer to input and randomize data stream from the TRS encoder, a SRS exchanger to replace the null data for inserting the SRS data to the known data, and an encoder for encoding a data streams to which the Known data is inserted. Accordingly, the present invention detects the known data from a signal received from a reception side and uses the detected known data for synchronization and equalization and further uses the TRS parity for correcting error of the received signal, so that the digital broadcasting reception performance can be improved at poor multipath channels.

A method and apparatus for creating a trick play video display from an MPEG-2 digital video transport stream are described. A trick play transport stream frame sequence template for each transport stream frame sequence and trick play video display mode supported by a video recorder is stored in the recorder. When the recorder receives an input transport stream frame sequence, the sequence is identified and template corresponding to that sequence and the selected trick play display mode is selected. The template is used to identify frames of the input transport stream to be appended to the trick play display transport stream frame sequence. When the trick play transport stream frame sequence is constructed the program clock reference, presentation time stamps and decoding time stamps associated with the frames are updated from information in the template.

A system and method for the simultaneous transmission and rendition of multiple MPEG-encoded digital video signal streams in an interactive television application are disclosed. Simultaneous transmission and rendition of multiple MPEG-encoded digital video signal streams in an interactive television application generally comprises determining a value for a display position code corresponding to a display position of each slice of each of the MPEG-encoded video streams, modifying the value of the display position code of each slice of each of the MPEG-encoded video streams as necessary, and interleaving each slice of each of the MPEG-encoded video streams as modified into a single composite video stream. The modifying preferably maintains bit-alignment of the display position code within a byte. The MPEG-encoded video streams are optionally MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 encoded video streams and the display position code is optionally a macroblock address increment variable length codeword and / or at least a byte of a slice startcode.

A system and method for switching data packet traffic distribution across diverse transmission medium according to detected quality of service characteristics for a given data packet rate from server to client. It should be recognized that diverse medium are not interdependent with regard to fading or signal strength considerations. One mode of switching comprises switching all the data packets from transmission on a first medium to transmission over a second diverse medium. In a second mode of switching the distribution is changed according to a media-time coding mechanism in which typically data is being transmitted simultaneously across more than one of the multiple diverse medium. The data packet transmissions preferably comprise audio-video data packet streams, such as MPEG-2 streams. By way of example, the diverse transmission medium may comprise a wireless connection (i.e. WiFi) used in combination with a power-line network connection, such as within a home network.

HDTV video decoder circuit is disclosed, which has an +E,fra 1 / 4+EE size frame memory for a progressive scanned or interlace scanned video and yet can conduct IDCT and motion compensation to fit to the reduced frame memory size, which, in comparison to a conventional MPEG-2 video decoder which uses a 4x4 IDCT that requires +E,fra 1 / 4+EE frame memory in encoding an interlace scanned image into frame picture only to lose field information of the image resulting in a significant damage to the picture quality, facilitates to maintain the field information as it was resulting in an improvement in the picture quality.

An apparatus or method of efficiently coding high resolution video using texture analysis and synthesis techniques in a scalable video coding framework. A high-resolution video signal is spatially downsampled and encoded into a base-layer. Texture and structure information are extracted from the downsampled signal and base-layer for use by a texture synthesizer. The texture synthesizer is structurally and texturally aware utilizing edge information from a base-layer of the synthesizer to improve synthesis. After synthesis, a video quality assessor directs enhancement-layer coding of unacceptably synthesized areas by alternate (non-textural) coding means, such as conventional AVC or MPEG-2 coding. In one mode, the quality assessor iteratively improves synthesis of certain blocks to make them acceptable for enhancement-layer coding. The apparatus or method outputs a bit stream, or bit streams, containing both the coded base-layer and the enhancement-layer.