MONITOR RECORDING DEVICE

• US 20090009598A1
• Filed: 01/31/2006
• Published: 01/08/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Sotodate, Hiromichi
• Granted Patent: US 8,355,045 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/143
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/76 Television signal recording
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/915 for field- or frame-skip recording or reproducing
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/183 for receiving images from a single remote source
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/8227 the additional signal being at least another television signal

Abstract

The monitor recording device (10) can allow an operator to identify an object with ease by comprising a frame control unit (11) for receiving a video signal of a monitor area at a specific frame rate such as for example one frame per second, a compression/expansion unit (12) for performing compression of video data indicative of the video signal, a storage unit (14) for recording the compressed video data therein, a moving object area detecting unit (15) for receiving an image of a monitor area at sixty frames per second, dividing the image into a plurality of sections, and detecting one or more sections including an image of a person going in and out of the monitor area, a person extracting unit (16) for extracting an image of his/her face from the sections detected by the moving object area detecting unit (15), an optimum image judging unit (17) for judging whether or not the image of his/her face is clear in comparison with previous image of his/her face, and deciding an optimum image of his/her face when the image of his/her face is clear in comparison with previous image of his/her face, a picture-in-picture header information producing unit (18) for producing picture-in-picture header information to be added to the optimum image of his/her face, a picture-in-picture synthesizing unit (20) for synthesizing the optimum image of his/her face and the video data expanded by the compression/expansion unit (12), and a drawing unit (21) for displaying the synthesized video on the monitor unit (40).

Claims

1. A monitor recording device, comprising:

moving object detecting means for detecting, from each frame of a video of a monitor area, an image of a specific moving object which is in said monitor area;

optimum image judging means for judging, as an optimum image, said image of said specific moving object detected from said video of said monitor area when said image of said specific moving object optimally complies with specific requirements; and

recording means for recording said optimum image.

2. A monitor recording device as set forth in claim 1, in which said recording means is adapted to record shooting information of said optimum image, said shooting information including shooting date and time of said optimum image.

3. A monitor recording device as set forth in claim 2, which further comprises video signal outputting means for outputting a video signal indicative of said video thinned in frame of said monitor area, and image synthesizing means for performing the synthesis of said optimum image and said video thinned in frame represented by said video signal.

4. A monitor recording device as set forth in claim 3, which further comprises dividing means for dividing each frame of said video of said monitor area into a plurality sections, and in which

said dividing means is adapted to classify said sections of each frame into first and second groups, said first group including one or more sections in which said specific moving object is detected, said second group including the remaining sections in which said specific moving object is not detected, and

said image synthesizing means is adapted to perform the synthesis of said optimum image and the nearest section selected from among said sections of said second group on the basis of the distances of said sections of said second group to each section of said first group.

5. A monitor recording device as set forth in claim 3, which further comprises searching means for searching specific data recorded by said recording means for data indicative of said optimum image, and in which

when said data corresponding to said optimum image is extracted from said data recorded by said recording means, said image synthesizing means is adapted to perform the synthesis of said video thinned in frame represented by said video signal, said optimum image, and shooting information including shooting date and time of said optimum image.

6. A monitor recording device as set forth in claim 1, in which said image of said specific moving object is constituted by an image of a person which is in said monitor area, said optimum image is constituted by an image of his/her face, said specific requirements relate to at least one of size, contrast, luminance, gamma value, and direction of his/her face extracted from said video of said monitor area.

7. A monitor recording device as set forth in claim 1, in which said image of said specific moving object is constituted by an image of an automotive vehicle which is in said monitor area, said optimum image is constituted by an image of a license plate of said automotive vehicle, said specific requirements relate to at least one of size, contrast, luminance, gamma value, and direction of said license plate extracted from said video of said monitor area.