Television memory system

• US 4,602,275 A
• Filed: 03/19/1984
• Issued: 07/22/1986
• Est. Priority Date: 03/19/1984
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: RCA Corporation
• Original Assignee: RCA Corporation
• Inventors: Limberg, Allen L., Smith, Terrence R.
• Primary Examiner(s): Shepperd, John W.
• Application Number:
  US06/590,989
• Time in Patent Office: 855 Days
• Field of Search: 358/11, 358/12, 358/13, 358/21 R, 358/31
• US Class Current: 348/450
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/907 using static stores, e.g. storage tubes or semiconductor memories H04N5/91 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/012 Conversion between an interlaced and a progressive signal for graphics images G09G2310/0229
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/78 for separating the brightness signal or the chrominance signal from the colour television signal, e.g. using comb filter

Abstract

A memory system for a television receiver is disclosed. The memory system contains an array of addressable memory cells, each row of which can contain one line of sampled video signals. The number of rows in the array is greater than the number of lines in a frame. Apparatus is included in the memory system for simultaneously writing more than one line of samples into the memory, for simultaneously reading more than one line of samples from the memory, or for both. Simultaneous access to multiple lines allows the reading and writing of multiple corresponding lines of samples from both the current and the prior frame. The row addresses that are used to store the lines of samples for a frame are not the same for each frame, rather the lines of each new frame are stored in rows with lesser addresses than the rows used for the prior frame. This introduces a backward scrolling of the stored image from frame to frame which avoids overwriting data to be used in time-domain or spatial-domain filtering done directly from memory.

Claims

1. A memory system for the storage of sampled video signals comprising:

a source of sampled lines of raster scanned video signals;

a memory including;

an input port coupled to said sample supplying means;

a plurality of output ports, P in number;

an array of storage locations addressed by rows and by columns, having a sufficient number of rows to contain at any time M successive lines in the final portion of one field of said raster scanned video signal and N successive lines in the initial portion of a second field, where M and N sum to a value greater than the number of lines in one field, said columns of said array of storage locations being arranged such that successive ones of said columns correspond to successive picture element samples in each line of said raster scanned video signal, and wherein said rows are interleaved to provide parallel access to at least P rows;

means for parallelly accessing at least P of said rows including means for reading each of said parallelly accessed rows at a respectively different one of said P output ports and means, coupled to said input port, for writing a line of samples into at least one of said parallelly accessed rows;

means for scrolling access to said parallelly accessed rows with row advance rate synchronized to the line advance rate of said raster scanned video signals.

2. A memory system as set forth in claim 1 further including,

sample processing means responsive to at least one of the signals from said output ports and to the signal from said source for providing a filtered replica of one of said signals.

3. A memory system as set forth in claim 2 wherein:

said samples provided by said source are samples of composite video signals including luminance components and chrominance components; and

said sample processing means include means for combining the samples from at least one of said P output ports and from said source for providing samples of separated luminance and chrominance signals.

4. A memory system as set forth in claim 3 wherein:

the M rows of said memory contain the lines constituting the final portion of a first frame of said raster scanned video signals;

the N rows of said memory contain the lines constituting the initial portion a second frame, being the frame immediately following said first frame, and wherein the numbers M and N sum to a number greater than the number of active lines in one frame of a raster scanned video signal;

said means for scrolling parallel across to said P rows includes;

means for accessing a first row through a first one of said P output ports, said first row containing samples from a first line, which corresponds to a line immediately preceding the line currently being supplied to said source;

means for accessing a second row through a second one of said P output ports, said second row containing samples from a second line which corresponds to the line immediately preceding said first line; and

means for accessing a third row through a third one of said P output ports, said third row containing samples from a third line being the line in the first frame that corresponds in position to said first line in said second frame.

5. A memory system as set forth in claim 4, further including:

sample processing means responsive to at least one of the signals from said output ports and to the signal from said source for providing a filtered replica of one of said signals.

6. A memory system as set forth in claim 5, wherein:

said sample processing means includes an adaptive comb filter comprising;

means coupled to said first and third output ports for algebraically combining samples provided thereby to produce a first set of filtered signal samples corresponding to separated chrominance signals;

means coupled to said first and second output ports and to said input port for algebraically combining samples provided thereby to produce a second set of filtered signal samples corresponding to separated chrominance signals;

a motion detector responsive to said first set of chrominance samples for generating an output signal upon the occurrence of interframe image motion;

means responsive to the output signal of said motion detector and to said first and second sets of luminance and chrominance samples for providing samples from said first set when the output signal of said motion detector has a value indicative of a relatively small amount of interframe motion and for providing samples from said second set otherwise.

7. The apparatus set forth in claim 6 wherein said motion detector includes a low pass filter.

8. A memory system as set forth in claim 1 wherein:

the M rows of said memory contain the lines constituting the final portion of a first frame of said raster scanned video signals;

the N rows of said memory contain the lines constituting the initial portion of a second frame immediately following said first frame and wherein the numbers M and N sum to a number greater than the number of active lines in one frame of a raster scanned video image;

said means for scrolling parallel across to said P rows includes means for accessing a first row containing the samples that constitute the line of video signal from said first frame corresponding in position to the line of video signal from said frame currently being supplied by said source, and means for channeling said samples from said first row to one of said output ports in time synchronization with the corresponding samples of the current line being supplied by said source.

9. A memory system as set forth in claim 8 further including:

sample processing means responsive to at least one of the signals from said memory output ports and to the signal from said source for providing a filtered replica of one of said signals.

10. A memory system as set forth in claim 9 wherein

said sample processing means includes means for algebraically combining samples from said input port with samples from at least said one of said output ports for providing digitized samples representing frame comb filtered chrominance and luminance signals.

11. In a television receiver for displaying images in progressive scan by repeated display of each frame in response to received interlaced scan television signals having first and second line-interlaced fields in each frame, said television receiver including a source of samples of said interlaced scan video signals, and further apparatus comprising:

a scan converter responsive to said samples of interlaced scan video signals for time compressing said samples to half a line duration and producing output samples at doubled normal picture element sampling rate;

a memory comprising;

an input port coupled to said scan converter;

at least one output port;

an array of storage locations addressed by rows and by columns, having a sufficient number of rows to contain at any time M active lines in the final portion of a first frame of said raster scanned video signal and N active lines in the initial portion of a second frame, where M and N sum to a value not less than the number of active lines in one frame, said columns of said array of storage locations being arranged such that successive ones of said columns correspond to successive picture element samples in each line of said raster scanned video signal; and

wherein said rows are interleaved to provide parallel access to a plurality of rows;

means for writing lines of said time compressed samples from said first field into a first set of alternate rows of said memory and for writing the samples of the lines of said second field into a second set of intervening alternate rows of said memory;

means for reading lines of samples at a doubled interlaced scan rate, from the rows of said memory to said output port, said means for reading being synchronized to the line advance rate of said raster scanned video signals;

multiplexing means for selecting time compressed samples as output signal, selecting them from said scan converter during the interval that the first set of alternate lines of said first field of each frame is supplied and otherwise from said memory output port, wherein successive selected lines of samples correspond to successive lines in a raster scanned image frame.

12. Apparatus set forth in claim 11 wherein said scan converter includes a first and a second shift register, each of said registers including a cascade of connected delay stages sufficient in number to store the samples descriptive of one line of picture elements, said first register being arranged to be serially loaded at conventional interlace scan rate from said source of samples and to be parallelly unloaded during line retrace, and said second register being arranged to be parallelly loaded during line retrace from said first register and to be serially unloaded at a rate twice said conventional interlace scan rate during the time said first register is being serially loaded.

13. A method for converting raster-scanned television signals with line-interlaced alternate fields to a double-shuttered progressively-scanned television signal, said method comprising the steps of:

sequentially addressing rows of a frame store memory having a number of rows at least as great as the number of active lines in two successive fields of said raster scanned television signal, addressing said rows at least one at a time at twice the line scan rate of said raster-scanned television signal with line-interlaced alternate fields;

scan converting said raster-scanned television signal with line-interlaced alternate fields to compress each scan line duration by half to provide a line-time-compressed television signal;

writing each successive active line of said raster-scanned television signal with line-interlaced alternate fields into a specified one of the sequentially addressed rows of said frame store memory;

reading from said sequentially addressed rows of said frame store memory to provide said progressively scanned television signal during the earlier ones of the line-interlaced fields in each of a succession of pairs of fields;

interleaving in time, to provide said progressively scanned television signal during the later ones of the line-interlaced fields in each of said succession of pairs of fields successive lines of said line-time-compressed television signal and alternate lines of television signal provided by reading said alternate lines of television signal from sequentially addressed rows of said frame store memory.

14. An apparatus for storage and transversal filtering of video signals comprising:

a source of sampled lines of raster scanned video signals;

a memory comprising;

an input port coupled to said sample supplying means;

a data bus;

a plurality of output ports P in number;

an array of storage locations addressed by rows and by columns, having a sufficient number of rows to contain at any time M active lines in the final portion of a first frame of said raster scanned video signal and N active lines in the initial portion of a second frame, where M and N sum to a value greater than the number of active lines in one frame, said columns of said array of storage locations being arranged such that successive ones of said columns correspond to successive picture element samples in each line of said raster scanned video signal; and

wherein said rows are interleaved to provide parallel access to at least P rows;

means for parallelly accessing at least P of said rows including;

means for reading each of said parallelly accessed rows at a respectively different one of said output ports;

means, coupled to said input port, for writing a first line of samples into a first one of said parallelly accessed rows; and

means, coupled to said data bus, for writing a second line of samples into a second one of said parallelly accessed rows;

means for scrolling access to said parallelly accessed rows with a row advance rate synchronized to the line advance rate of said raster scanned video signals;

means for combining the samples from said output ports to provide samples of a first transversally filtered output signal; and

means for providing the samples of said first transversally filtered output signal to said data bus.

15. The apparatus set forth in claim 14 further including means for operating said array of storage locations as an interleaved memory including:

P memory modules, numbered 0 through P-1, each module being coupled to said input port and to said data bus and to a respectively different one of said P output ports, the rows of said modules being arranged so that successive lines supplied to said first input port are written into modules with successively greater numbers, modulo P;

wherein each of said P modules comprises a number Q of submodules, numbered 0 through Q-1, the columns of said submodules being arranged so that successive samples of a line are written into submodules with successively greater numbers, modulo Q.

16. The apparatus set forth in claim 15 wherein said memory includes a means for parallelly accessing a plurality of rows comprising:

an address input port;

a controller coupled to said address input port including;

means for generating P read address and P read control signals, each of said read addresses being paired with a respectively different one of said read control signals for application to a respectively different one of said P memory modules for controlling the parallel reading of samples from the P rows of said memory; and

means for generating first and second write address and write control signal pairs for application to respectively different ones of said P memory modules for controlling the parallel writing

of said samples applied to said input port and said

data bus respectively.

17. Apparatus set forth in claim 16 wherein said means for scrolling parallel access to said memory comprises:

a system enabling means coupled to said sample supplying means for providing an output signal having one value during the time that active lines of a frame are being received and another value during the vertical blanking interval;

a row enabling means, coupled to said sample supplying means for providing an output signal having one value during the time that picture information of a line is being received and another value during the horizontal blanking interval;

field detecting means, responsive to the output signal of said system enabling means and said row enabling means for providing an output signal having one value after an odd field has been received and another value after an even field has been received;

clock generating means coupled to said sample supplying means for providing a digital clock signal synchronized to the rate at which said samples are provided by said sample supplying means;

a column counter responsive to said digital clock signal and to said output signal of said row enabling means for providing a column address, said counter being reset to a predetermined value in response to the output signal of said column enabling means during the horizontal blanking interval;

a row counter for providing a row address, said row counter being incremented by an even value, by a first odd value, and by a second odd value in response to the output signals of said column enabling means, said field detecting means, and said row enabling means.

18. A memory system for the storage of sampled video signals comprising:

a source of sampled lines of raster scanned video signals;

an array of storage location each row of which includes a sufficient number of storage locations to contain the active portion of a line of sampled video signals and the rows of said array being sufficient in number to contain more lines of samples than are needed to hold the active lines of a field of raster scanned video signals;

means for accessing a plurality of said rows for simultaneously reading at least a first line of sampled video signals from said array and for writing at least a second line of sampled video signals into said array;

means for changing the addresses used by said accessing means in synchronization with the line and field advance rates of said source for writing corresponding lines of samples from successive fields into rows with successively smaller address values, modulo N, N being an integer greater than the number of active lines in a frame but not greater than the number of rows of the array.