Digital camera for capturing a sequence of full and reduced resolution digital images and storing motion and still digital image data

• US 7,110,025 B1
• Filed: 10/11/2000
• Issued: 09/19/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 05/28/1997
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company
• Inventors: Loui, Alexander C., Parulski, Kenneth A., Joshi, Rajan L., Jackson, William M., Berarducci, Thomas N.
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran, Thai
• Assistant Examiner(s): JONES, HEATHER RAE
• Application Number:
  US09/685,998
• Time in Patent Office: 2,169 Days
• Field of Search: 348/220.1, 348/333.05, 348/333.11, 348/333.12, 386/117, 386/120, 386/121
• US Class Current: 348/220.1
• 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 19/159 Prediction type, e.g. intra-frame, inter-frame or bidirectional frame prediction
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/172 the region being a picture, frame or field
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/182 the unit being a pixel
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/33 in the spatial domain
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/59 involving spatial sub-sampling or interpolation, e.g. alteration of picture size or resolution
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4223 Cameras H04N23/00 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/440263 by altering the spatial resolution, e.g. for displaying on a connected PDA
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44029 for generating different versions
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/64792 Controlling the complexity of the content stream, e.g. by dropping packets intermediate media network packet handling H04L65/765; proxy provisioning conversion or adaptation for reducing the amount or size of exchanged application data H04L67/5651; negotiation of resources in wireless networks H04W28/16
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8153 comprising still images, e.g. texture, background image
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/667 Camera operation mode switching, e.g. between still and video, sport and normal or high- and low-resolution modes
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/77 between a recording apparatus and a television camera
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/772 the recording apparatus and the television camera being placed in the same enclosure
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/781 on disks or drums
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/85 on discs or drums
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/907 using static stores, e.g. storage tubes or semiconductor memories H04N5/91 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/7921 for more than one processing mode
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/8042 involving data reduction
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/8047 using transform coding

Abstract

A method for simultaneously recording motion and still images, includes the steps of: capturing a motion image sequence and accompanying audio of a scene with a digital video camera adapted to record both motion and higher resolution still images; simultaneously capturing a still image sequence having a higher resolution and lower frame rate than the motion capture sequence; compressing the motion image sequence using interframe compression and the accompanying audio and storing the compressed motion image and audio data; and compressing the still images using intraframe coding and storing the compressed still image data.

Claims

1. A digital motion/still camera comprising:

a) an image sensor for providing a sequence of image frames;

b) means for automatically providing a repeating sequence of full resolution image frames regularly interspersed between reduced resolution image frames, wherein the full resolution image frames represent images with more pixels than are represented by the reduced resolution image frames;

c) a first image buffer for storing at least one full resolution frame of pixel values;

d) a second image buffer for storing a plurality of reduced resolution frames of pixel values; and

e) a digital recorder coupled to the first and second image buffers for storing a repeating sequence of full and reduced resolution frames of pixel values.

2. The digital motion/still camera of claim 1, wherein the repeating sequence has a single full resolution frame followed by a plurality of low resolution frames.

3. The digital motion/still camera of claim 1, wherein the full resolution image is stored using a low resolution component stored as part of a motion sequence, and a full resolution component.

4. The digital motion/still camera of claim 1, wherein the apparatus further includes a processor coupled to the first image memory, that processes the stored full resolution frames prior to recording, and produces from a full resolution image frame both a low resolution frame and a high resolution image frame.

5. The digital motion/still camera of claim 4, wherein the processing period for the still image is longer than the capture frame period.

6. The digital motion/still camera of claim 5, wherein the processor also processes the reduced resolution frames in a processing period that is shorter than the capture frame period.

7. The digital motion/still camera of claim 1, further comprising a control for allowing the operator to set the number of full resolution frames to be captured per second.