Method and apparatus for providing dual language captioning of a television program

• US 5,294,982 A
• Filed: 12/24/1991
• Issued: 03/15/1994
• Est. Priority Date: 12/24/1991
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: National Captioning Institute, Inc.
• Original Assignee: National Captioning Institute, Inc.
• Inventors: Faust, Anthony M., Salomon, Amnon M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Groody, James J.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Harvey, David E.
• Application Number:
  US07/813,021
• Time in Patent Office: 812 Days
• Field of Search: 358/147, 358/142, 358/146, 340/750, 340/751, 340/748, 340/735, 340/732
• US Class Current: 348/461
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47 End-user applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4884 for displaying subtitles
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/9208 involving the use of subcodes
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/93 Regeneration of the television signal or of selected parts thereof
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/035 Circuits for the digital non-picture data signal, e.g. for slicing of the data signal, for regeneration of the data-clock signal, for error detection or correction of the data signal
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/0885 for the transmission of subtitles

Abstract

A method of decoding data for a language having the Roman alphabet or a language having a syllabic alphabet from a composite video signal comprises the steps of receiving the data in the form of data packets and determining from bit values stored at particular bit positions whether the data is control data or represents printable character data comprising a head code or a tail code. Once it is determined that the data represents either a head code or a tail code of a printable character, the data bytes are valued for parity and, from that determination, a letter component is generated which points to a letter component or complete character for one or the other alphabet. Because characters of a syllabic language may be quite complex, the step of displaying the syllabic language character includes the steps of overlaying two or more letter components to form the syllabic character image. Furthermore, the syllabic language character is displayed having a height of approximately three quarters inch on a standard resolution NTSC signal television screen.

Claims

1. In decoder apparatus for decoding data encoded on particular horizontal lines of a vertical blanking interval of a composite video signal, a method for decoding the encoded data characterized by the steps of

receiving the encoded data as a serial data stream of data frames, each data frame comprising a synchronization field and two data bytes.

retrieving data packets from the data frames,

decoding the data packets, each data packet comprising a plurality of data bytes, the data packets indicated by particular bit indications appearing in one of the plurality of bytes of each data packet,

storing a plurality of letter components in memory for at least two languages, a first language having the Roman alphabet and a second language having a syllabic alphabet,

determining if the data packet represents a non-printable character, and

mapping remaining bit positions of the data packet for a printable character into a number of letter component pointer bytes less than or equal to the number of bytes comprising the data packets, the letter component pointer bytes for pointing to one of a Roman alphabet letter or a syllabic alphabet letter component in memory for display.

2. A method according to claim 1 wherein each data packet comprises one head code and two tail codes.

3. A method according to claim 1 further comprising the step of generating one or more letter blocks for display, wherein if the letter component pointer bytes point to a syllabic alphabet, one letter block is formed from two or more letter components, but if the letter component pointer bytes point to the Roman alphabet, one or more letter blocks are formed, each letter block corresponding to a single letter component pointer byte.

4. A method according to claim 3 further comprising the step of displaying a syllabic language syllable approximately three quarter inch in height on a standard resolution television screen having approximately a 19 inch diagonal screen.

5. A method according to claim 3 wherein if the letter component pointer bytes point to a syllabic alphabet, the one letter block is formed by overlaying the two or more letter components.

6. A method according to claim 1 further comprising the step of evaluating whether a syllabic or non-syllabic mode has been selected for the decoder apparatus, and if the syllabic mode has been selected, mapping the remaining bit positions of the data packet into letter component pointer bytes for pointing to a syllabic alphabet, and if the syllabic mode has not been selected, mapping the remaining bit positions of the data packet into the Roman alphabet.

7. A method according to claim 1 further comprising the initial step of counting lines to determine one of two fields, each field representing a different language channel.

28. A method according to claim 1 wherein the number of bytes of each data packet is three.

8. In decoder apparatus for decoding encoded data received on particular horizontal lines of a vertical blanking interval of a composite video signal, a method for decoding the encoded data characterized by the steps of

decoding data packets, each data packet comprising one head code and three tail codes, the data packets indicated by particular bit indications appearing in the head code of each data packet,

storing a plurality of letter components in memory for at least two languages, a first language having the Roman alphabet and a second language having a syllabic alphabet,

determining if the data packet represents a non-printable character, and

mapping remaining bit positions of the data packet for a printable character into a number of letter component pointer bytes less than or equal to the number of bytes comprising the data packets, the letter component pointer bytes for pointing to a Roman alphabet letter or a syllabic alphabet letter component in memory for display.

11. A method according to claim 8 further comprising the step of evaluating at least two predetermined bit positions of each byte of the data packet.

12. A method according to claim 11 wherein the predetermined bit positions of each byte of the data packet comprise no more than two predetermined bit positions.

13. A method according to claim 11 wherein each byte of each data packet comprises eight bits numbered 0 through 7 and the predetermined bit positions comprise at least bit position 6.

20. A method as in claim 8, wherein the second language is Korean.

9. In decoder apparatus for decoding encoded data received on particular horizontal lines of a vertical blanking interval of a composite video signal, a method for decoding the encoded data characterized by the steps of

decoding data packets, each data packet comprising four bytes, the data packets indicated by particular bit indications appearing in one of the four bytes of each data packet,

storing a plurality of letter components in memory for at least two languages, a first language having the Roman alphabet and a second language having a syllabic alphabet,

determining if the data packet represents a non-printable character, and

mapping remaining bit positions of the data packet for a printable character into a number of letter component pointer bytes less than or equal to the four bytes, the letter component pointer bytes for pointing to a Roman alphabet letter or a syllabic alphabet letter component in memory for display.

10. A method according to claim 9 wherein the number of letter component bytes is three.

21. A method as in claim 9, wherein the second language is Korean.

14. Apparatus for decoding encoded data received on particular horizontal lines of a vertical blanking interval of a composite video signal, the apparatus comprising

a data extractor for extracting the encoded data from the particular horizontal lines of the vertical blanking interval and outputing the extracted data,

a closed caption data controller, responsive to the data extractor, for stripping parity from the received data, for determining if the data comprises a printable character, and for outputing pointer data,

a display random access memory having a plurality of pointer registers responsive to the closed caption data controller, and

a character memory, responsive to the display random access memory, for outputing selected character data,

the apparatus characterized in that

the closed caption data processor further determines the identity of a head code or a tail code of printable character data from predetermined bit positions of the received printable character data, the printable character data representing a syllabic character or a Roman alphabet character and comprising a first plurality of bytes, the first plurality of bytes of printable character data being translated into a lesser number of letter component pointer bytes and

the display random access memory stores letter component pointer data for uniquely pointing to a syllabic character letter component in the character memory.

15. The apparatus according to claim 14 further characterized by a closed caption overlay circuit for overlaying a plurality of letter components output from the character memory to replace input video picture data, the remaining video picture data and the overlaid letter components being output for display on an associated screen.

16. The apparatus according to claim 15 further characterized in that a plurality of overlaid letter components output from the closed caption overlay circuit comprise a syllabic character for display.

17. The apparatus according to claim 14 further characterized in that the character memory comprises memory for storing display data for approximately three hundred twenty-seven letter components.

18. The apparatus according to claim 16 further characterized in that the overlaid letter components comprise a letter block having a size of 10×

16, each letter component being identified by predetermined starting coordinates and predetermined dimensions within the letter block.

19. The apparatus according to claim 14 wherein the first plurality of printable character data bytes comprise a head code and three tail codes.

22. In decoder apparatus for decoding data encoded on particular horizontal lines of a vertical blanking interval of a composite video signal, a method for decoding the encoded data characterized by the steps of

receiving the encoded data as a serial data stream of data frames, each data frame comprising a synchronization field and two data bytes,

retrieving data packets from the data frames,

decodeing the data packets, each data packet comprising a plurality of data bytes, the data packets indicated by particular bit indications appearing in one of the plurality of bytes of each data packet,

storing a plurality of letter components in memory for a first language having a syllabic alphabet,

mapping remaining bit positions of each data packet into a number of letter component pointer bytes less than or equal to the number of bytes comprising each data packet, the letter component pointer bytes for pointing to two or more letter components in memory for display,

retrieving the two or more letter components corresponding to the letter component pointer bytes from the memory, and

creating a letter block by overlaying the two or more retrieved letter components.

23. A method as in claim 22 further comprising the step of determining, prior to the step of mapping remaining bit positions of each data packet into letter component pointer bytes, whether the data packet represents a non-printable character.

24. A method as in claim 22 wherein the step of storing a plurality of letter components further includes storing letter components for a second language having a Roman alphabet in the memory, and further including the step of:

determining whether the letter component pointer bytes point to a Roman or a syllabic alphabet, and, if the letter component pointer bytes point to a Roman alphabet, creating a letter block for each of the two or more letter components instead of overlaying the two or more letter components.

25. A method as in claim 22, wherein the first language is Korean.

26. A method as in claim 22, wherein the number of different letter blocks created by the overlaying of the two or more retrieved letter components exceeds the number of letter components.

27. A method as in claim 22, wherein the number of letter components retrieved from memory and the number of letter components overlaid to create the letter block is three.