METHOD FOR ASSISTING VIDEO COMPRESSION IN A COMPUTER SYSTEM

• US 20100020247A1
• Filed: 09/29/2009
• Published: 01/28/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/26/1998
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Round Rock Research LLC
• Original Assignee: Micron Technology, Inc.
• Inventors: Klein, Dean A.
• Application Number:
  US12/569,624
• Publication Number:
  US 20100020247A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/715
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/503 involving temporal prediction adaptive coding with adaptive selection between spatial and temporal predictive coding H04N19/107; adaptive coding with adaptive selection among a plurality of temporal predictive coding modes H04N19/109
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4143 embedded in a Personal Computer [PC]

Abstract

One embodiment of the present invention provides a method that facilitates compression of video data in a computer system by performing the time-consuming task of computing the difference between successive frames of video data independently from the central processing unit. This frees the often-overburdened central processing unit from performing this time-consuming compression operation and can thereby improve the handling of video data. Thus, one embodiment of the present invention can be characterized as a method thr compressing video data in a computer system. This method includes receiving a stream of data from a current video frame in the computer system. It also includes computing a difference frame from the current video frame and a previous video frame “on-the-fly” as the current video frame streams into the computer system. The method additionally includes storing the difference frame in a memory in the computer system.

Claims

1. A method for compressing video data in a computer system comprising:

computing a difference frame from a current video frame and a previous video frame as the current video frame streams into the computer system;

storing the difference frame in a system memory in the computer system; and

a processor retrieving the difference frame directly from the system memory via a core logic chip using a dedicated processor interface therebetween to complete compression of the video data.

2. The method of claim 1, including storing the current video frame in the system memory in the computer system.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the current video frame is written over a previous video frame in the system memory.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein computing the difference frame includes computing an exclusive-OR between the current video frame and the previous video frame.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein computing the difference frame includes computing a difference between a block of data from the current video frame and a block of data from the previous video frame.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein storing the difference frame in the system memory includes storing the difference frame in the system memory using block transfers.

7. The method of claim 1, including compressing the video data using the difference frame to produce compressed video data.

8. The method of claim 1, including performing a color space conversion on the video data.

9. The method of claim 1, including using the video data in compressed form in a video teleconferencing system.

10. The method of claim 1, including storing instructions and data for the computer system in the system memory.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein computing the difference frame includes computing the difference frame in a core logic chip within the computer system.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein computing the difference frame includes computing the difference frame in circuitry outside of the processor in the computer system.

13. A method for compressing video data in a computer system, comprising:

computing a difference frame from a current video frame and a previous video frame as the current video frame streams into the computer system, wherein computing the difference frame includes computing an exclusive-OR between the current video frame and the previous video frame;

storing the difference frame in a memory in the computer system;

storing the current video frame in the memory in the computer system;

a processor retrieving the difference frame directly from the system memory via a core logic chip compressing the video data using the difference frame to produce compressed video data.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the current video frame is written over a previous video frame in the memory.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein computing the difference frame includes computing a difference between a block of data from the current video frame and a block of data from the previous video frame.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein storing the difference frame in memory includes storing the difference frame in the memory using block transfers.

17. The method of claim 13, including using the compressed data in a video teleconferencing system.

18. The method of claim 13, including performing a color space conversion on the video data.

19. The method of claim 13, including storing instructions and data for the computer system in the memory.

20. The method of claim 13, wherein computing the difference frame includes computing the difference frame in the core logic chip within the computer system.