Image Caching for Collaborative Display Transmission
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional methods for sharing applications in online collaborative computing sessions consume significant network bandwidth due to inefficient image data transmission, especially with poor compression ratios and multiple attendee devices.
Innovation Solution
The display is divided into identified blocks, and only the updated region is compressed and transmitted, with unchanged blocks replaced by easily compressible images, allowing viewer devices to use cached versions of unchanged blocks.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If conventional image compression techniques are used for transmitting shared display images, then image data can be transmitted through the network, but the compression ratio is poor and network bandwidth is consumed significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The display image is divided into multiple blocks, and only the updated region containing changed blocks is transmitted. This segmentation allows the system to send only necessary portions of the image data rather than compressing and transmitting the entire image, significantly reducing network bandwidth consumption while maintaining image quality.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts and transmits only the updated region from the full display image. By identifying and separating the changed portion from the unchanged portions, the system eliminates unnecessary data transmission, improving compression efficiency and reducing network bandwidth usage.
2Reliability
If the entire display image is transmitted to each attendee device, then all attendees can view the shared application, but network resources are consumed excessively with multiple attendee devices
Solution Approach 1:
By dividing the display into blocks and identifying only the updated region, the patent enables selective transmission of changed blocks to multiple attendee devices. This ensures all attendees receive the necessary update information while consuming minimal network resources, even when multiple devices are connected.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transmits only the partial updated region rather than the complete image to each attendee. This partial action approach provides sufficient information for attendees to reconstruct the full image using their local caches, eliminating excessive data transmission while maintaining viewing quality.
3Loss of information
If unchanged blocks are transmitted in full resolution, then image quality is maintained, but data transmission size is not minimized
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the updated region containing changed blocks from the full image for transmission. Unchanged blocks are excluded from the transmission data, minimizing data size while maintaining image completeness through client-side caching of previous image versions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses client-side caching where unchanged blocks are copied from previously stored image data at the attendee device. This eliminates the need to retransmit unchanged blocks, reducing data transmission size while maintaining complete image reconstruction capability.
Data Source
AI summary
In one embodiment, a display of a source device is shared with one or more viewer devices, e.g., of an online collaborative computing session, and the display is divided into a plurality of identified blocks. In response to changes in the display, the source device determines an outer boundary of an updated region affected by the change, where the updated region defines a plurality of “update blocks” of the identified blocks within the outer boundary. Images within each update block may then be compared to a previous version of the corresponding update block to determine if that individual update block is affected by the change. Any unchanged update blocks may be converted to an easily compressible image, and the source device may then compress and transmit the updated region to the viewer devices, where the transmitted updated region has instructions to use previous versions of unchanged converted update blocks.