Patent · US Expired

Color image data and control bit compression scheme with run length encoding

US6721456B1 · kind B1 · utility

6Cited by
17References
24Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateFeb 23, 2000
Grant dateApr 13, 2004
Priority date
Expiry dateFeb 23, 2020

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH03M7/46
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A method of compressing pixel information is described. The pixel data is received in a data stream and compressed into a compressed data format by identifying a run of consecutive bytes of the data stream based on the similarity of the consecutive data bytes in the data stream. A mode bit of a compression byte is used to indicate whether a run of consecutive bytes is identified. Count bits of the compression byte are used to indicate the number of times the data bytes are repeated and zero counts may be used to indicate particular types of runs, for example, runs to the end of a scan line and the end of an object. Where a pixel byte is represented by 8 bits, the data stream may be compressed in multiples of four bytes at a time. If a pixel is represent by less than 8 bits, the compression method may look for repetitions of similar bytes one byte at a time.

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