Image signal coding system

• US 6,097,759 A
• Filed: 11/22/1999
• Issued: 08/01/2000
• Est. Priority Date: 10/22/1991
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha (Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha (Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
• Inventors: Yamada, Yoshihisa, Nishikawa, Hirofumi, Asai, Kohtaro, Murakami, Tokumichi
• Primary Examiner(s): Tung, Bryan
• Application Number:
  US09/444,455
• Time in Patent Office: 253 Days
• Field of Search: 348/384, 348/390, 348/400, 348/401, 348/402, 348/403, 348/404, 348/405, 348/409, 348/415, 348/416, 348/420, 382/232, 382/233, 382/236, 382/238
• US Class Current: 375/240
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/105 Selection of the reference unit for prediction within a chosen coding or prediction mode, e.g. adaptive choice of position and number of pixels used for prediction
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/112 according to a given display mode, e.g. for interlaced or progressive display mode
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/119 Adaptive subdivision aspects, e.g. subdivision of a picture into rectangular or non-rectangular coding blocks
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/124 Quantisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/132 Sampling, masking or truncation of coding units, e.g. adaptive resampling, frame skipping, frame interpolation or high-frequency transform coefficient masking
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/137 Motion inside a coding unit, e.g. average field, frame or block difference
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/14 Coding unit complexity, e.g. amount of activity or edge presence estimation H04N19/146 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/152 by measuring the fullness of the transmission buffer
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/16 for a given display mode, e.g. for interlaced or progressive display mode
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/172 the region being a picture, frame or field
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/176 the region being a block, e.g. a macroblock
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/577 Motion compensation with bidirectional frame interpolation, i.e. using B-pictures
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/61 in combination with predictive coding

Abstract

An adaptive blocking coding system selects an effective blocking of an input image signal to be encoded in accordance with the correlation between fields, even if motion is detected between the fields. The blocking patterns include an individual field blocking, a non-interlace blocking, a split blocking and an inverted split blocking. Further, the coding system searches for motion from both odd and even fields of a frame for producing a motion compensated prediction signal in order to provide high-efficient coding.

Claims

1. A video signal encoder for encoding a first motion video signal representative of sequential video images including first and second video images into a second motion video signal comprising:

a predictive error signal generator for generating a predictive error signal representative of the error in the second video image based on a prediction formed at least in part from the first video image;

a coder for transform coding the predictive error signal to produce a coded predictive error signal, said coder varying the scanning sequence of the transform coefficients thereof;

a local decoder detecting the scanning sequence of transform coefficients used in transform coding, and decoding the transform coefficients of the coded predictive error signal to produce information representative of the first motion video signal including the first video image;

a combiner, operatively connected to said local decoder, and combining the predictive error signal with a predictive signal;

an image data memory, operatively connected to said combiner, for storing information representative of the first video image as image data;

a predictive signal generator, operatively connected to said image data memory, and supplying the predictive signal from the image data stored in said image data memory to said predictive error signal generator and said combiner;

wherein a signal representative of the second video image of the first motion video signal is assembled from the predictive error signal developed from a difference between the first video image and the second video image;

wherein the coded predictive error signal from said coder is output as the second motion video signal.

2. The encoder of claim 1 wherein said coder varies the scanning sequence used in transform coding based on encoding efficiency.

3. The encoder of claim 1 wherein:

said predictive error signal generator includes a subtracter, operatively connected to said predictive signal generator, and subtracting the predictive signal from a signal representative of the second video image of the first motion video signal to form the predictive error signal; and

a block former, operatively connected to said subtracter, and forming the predictive error signal into blocks;

said coder being operatively connected to said block former, and encoding the blocked predictive error signal to form the coded predictive error signal.

4. A video signal conversion system for converting between a first motion video signal representative of sequential video images including first and second video images and a second motion video signal comprising:

a decoder detecting the scanning sequence of transform coefficients used in transform coding, and decoding the transform coefficients to produce information representative of the first and second video images;

an image data memory for storing information representative of the first video image as image data;

a predictive signal generator, operatively connected to said image data memory, and supplying a predictive signal from the image data stored in said image data memory;

wherein a signal representative of the second video image is assembled from a predictive error signal output from said decoder and developed from a difference between the first video image and the second video image; and

a combiner, operatively connected to said image data memory, and combining the signal representative of the second video image with the predictive signal produced by said predictive signal generator.

5. The video signal conversion system of claim 4 wherein the scanning sequence used in transform coding the transform coefficients is determined based on coding efficiency.

6. The video signal conversion system of claim 4 wherein the conversion system converts from the first motion video signal to the second video signal.

7. The video signal conversion system of claim 4 wherein said image data memory stores said image data and said predictive signal generator supplies plural predictive signals from the image data, said predictive signal generator including,

an interpolator, operatively connected to said image data memory, interpolating at least some of the plurality of predictive signals and generating an interpolated predictive signal which is different from any of the plurality of predictive signals supplied by said predictive signal generator, and

a selector, receiving the plural predictive signals and the interpolated predictive signal, and selecting a predictive signal from the plurality of predictive signals and the interpolated predictive signal.

8. The video signal conversion system of claim 7 wherein said combiner includes an adder, said adder adding the predictive error signal and the interpolated signal produced by said interpolator and supplying the output thereof to said image data memory.

9. The video signal conversion system of claim 7 further comprising:

a subtracter, operatively connected to said selector, and subtracting one of the plural predictive signals including the interpolative predictive signal from a signal representative of the second video image of the first motion video signal to form the predictive error signal; and

an encoder, operatively connected to said subtracter, and encoding the predictive error signal to form an encoded predictive error signal, wherein said encoder varies the scanning sequence used in transform coding the transform coefficients;

said decoder being operatively connected to said encoder, for decoding the encoded predictive error signal for supply to said combiner.

10. The video signal conversion system of claim 7 wherein the interpolator produces the interpolated predictive signal by computing the arithmetic mean of at least some of the plural predictive signals.