Patent · US Expired

Method and apparatus for removing color artifacts in region-based coding

US6035060A · kind A · utility

21Cited by
7References
19Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateFeb 14, 1997
Grant dateMar 7, 2000
Priority date
Expiry dateFeb 14, 2017

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04N19/20
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A method and apparatus for generating region frames from video frames are disclosed which employs an industry standard encoder to lessen the negative impact on the quality of the transmitted video sequence while consuming fewer bits. The invention utilizes image segmentation and color replacement techniques to create the region frames. Each region frame includes a subject region, zero or more previously segmented regions and zero or more non-subject regions. The subject region is defined by the pixels of the original video frame. The previously segmented regions and non-subject regions are assigned replacement pixels P.sub.n,y and C.sub.n, respectively. The replacement pixel C.sub.n is chosen to indicate a color that is not likely to be confused with any color in the subject region R.sub.n. The replacement pixels P.sub.n,y are chosen such that the compression ratio of the region frame data is maximized. Using the region frames, content based scalability can be provided without the need for special encoders and/or channels having a wider bandwidth. Also, color artifacts associated with the segmenting process are removed by color clipping or gray-level erosion.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.