Digital camera device providing improved methodology for rapidly taking successive pictures
First Claim
1. A method for compressing digital images upon capture at a digital camera device, the method comprising:
- receiving user input requesting capture of a sequence of digital images at the digital camera device, said digital images being stored in an image buffer;
applying a relatively-fast compression technique to temporarily compress at least some of the digital images upon capture, so as to increase availability of storage in said image buffer for storing other digital images being capture;
at some point in time after cessation of the user input, decompressing any of the digital images that were temporarily compressed; and
thereafter applying a relatively-thorough compression technique to the captured sequence of digital images.
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Accused Products
Abstract
An in-camera two-stage compression implementation is described that reduces the latency between snapshots to a fraction of that otherwise required by other systems that either process complete compression following each snapshot or that incorporate heavy, bulky, and expensive RAM hardware capable of maintaining several raw luminosity records (unprocessed file containing a digital image). In the 1st stage compression the raw luminosity record is quickly, yet partially, compressed to available RAM buffer space to allow a user to expeditiously capture a succeeding image. When the higher-priority processes, the user shooting pictures, and stage one compression subside, a 2nd stage compression, which is slower but more effective, decompresses the earlier partially-compressed images, and re-compresses them for saving in flash memory until they are distributed to a remote platform to be finally converted to the JPEG2000 format.
312 Citations
52 Claims
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1. A method for compressing digital images upon capture at a digital camera device, the method comprising:
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receiving user input requesting capture of a sequence of digital images at the digital camera device, said digital images being stored in an image buffer;
applying a relatively-fast compression technique to temporarily compress at least some of the digital images upon capture, so as to increase availability of storage in said image buffer for storing other digital images being capture;
at some point in time after cessation of the user input, decompressing any of the digital images that were temporarily compressed; and
thereafter applying a relatively-thorough compression technique to the captured sequence of digital images. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40)
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41. A digital camera device with improved latency time between acquiring pictures, the device comprising:
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a digital camera device for capturing digital images to an image buffer;
a user-activated button, integrated into the digital camera device, for generating a user request to capture a sequence of digital images at the digital camera device, said digital images being stored in the image buffer upon capture;
a first compression module, embodied within the digital camera device, for temporarily compressing at least some of the digital images upon capture, thereby freeing up available storage in said image buffer;
a decompression module, embodied within the digital camera device, for decompressing any of the digital images that were temporarily compressed at some point in time after activation of said user-activated button; and
a second compression module, embodied within the digital camera device, for compressing said digital images more thoroughly than that provided by said first compression module. - View Dependent Claims (42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52)
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Specification