Method and apparatus for filtering video data using a programmable graphics processor

• US 7,619,687 B1
• Filed: 12/14/2007
• Issued: 11/17/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/29/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NVIDIA Corporation
• Original Assignee: NVIDIA Corporation
• Inventors: Amann, Garry W., Azar, Hassane S., Lew, Stephen D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran; Trang U
• Application Number:
  US11/957,354
• Time in Patent Office: 704 Days
• Field of Search: 348/448, 348/441, 348449-452, 348/458, 348/604, 348/558, 345/531, 345/501, 345430-431
• US Class Current: 348/448
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/86 involving reduction of coding artifacts, e.g. of blockiness
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/01 Conversion of standards , e.g. involving analogue television standards or digital television standards processed at pixel level
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/012 Conversion between an interlaced and a progressive signal for graphics images G09G2310/0229

Abstract

Video filtering using a programmable graphics processor is described. The programmable graphics processor may be programmed to complete a plurality of video filtering operations in a single pass through a fragment-processing pipeline within the programmable graphics processor. Video filtering functions such as deinterlacing, chroma up-sampling, scaling, and deblocking may be performed by the fragment-processing pipeline. The fragment-processing pipeline may be programmed to perform motion adaptive deinterlacing, wherein a spatially variant filter determines, on a pixel basis, whether a “bob”, a “blend”, or a “weave” operation should be used to process an interlaced image.

Claims

1. A computer-readable storage medium storing program instructions that, when executed by a programmable graphics processor, cause the programmable graphics processor to filter video data, by performing the steps of:

executing a deinterlacing function on the video data when a deinterlacing enable field within a codeword is activated, wherein the codeword specifies a programmable computation unit (PCU) within the programmable graphics processor and configures the PCU to filter the video data;

executing a scaling function on the video data when a scaling enable field within the codeword is activated;

executing a deblocking function on the video data when a deblocking enable field within the codeword is activated; and

executing a color space conversion function on the video data when a color space conversion enable field within the codeword is activated.

2. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the deinterlacing function comprises a spatially variant deinterlacing function.

3. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 2, wherein the step of executing the deinterlacing function comprises applying the spatially variant deinterlacing function to one or more pixels in a current frame of the video data to generate one or more deinterlaced pixels based on characteristics of the video data associated with one or more pixels in a previous frame of the video data that correspond to the one or more pixels in the current frame of the video data.

4. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 3, wherein the step of executing the deinterlacing function comprises performing a bob operation, a blend operation, or a weave operation on the one or more pixels in the current frame of the video data.

5. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the deblocking function comprises a spatially dependent deblocking function.

6. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 5, wherein the step of executing the deblocking function comprises applying the spatially dependent deblocking function to one or more pixels in a current frame of the video data to generate one or more deblocked pixels, wherein a deblocked pixel in the one or more deblocked pixels is generated based on whether the position of a pixel in the one or more pixels in the current frame corresponds to a horizontal block encoding boundary.

7. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 6, wherein the deblocked pixel in the one or more deblocked pixels is generated further based on whether the position of the pixel in the one or more pixels in the current frame corresponds to a vertical block encoding boundary.

8. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 6, wherein the position of each pixel in the current frame comprises an X, Y position within the current frame.

9. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 6, wherein the color of the deblocked pixel is based on the color of one or more pixels in the current frame that reside within an M by N region of pixels in the current frame associated with the deblocked pixel, where M and N are integers.

10. The computer-readable storage medium claim 1, wherein the codeword comprises an application programming interface function call.

11. A computing system, comprising:

a host processor;

a programmable graphics processor for filtering video data, wherein the programmable graphics processor includes a shading pipeline; and

a host memory coupled to the host processor and to the programmable graphics processor and including;

an application programming interface comprising a function call to configure the shading pipeline to filter the video data using;

a deinterlacing function when a deinterlacing enable field included in the function call is activated,

a scaling function when a scaling enable field included in the function call is activated,

a deblocking function when a deblocking enable field included in the function call is activated, and

a color space conversion function when a color space conversion enable field included in the function call is activated.

12. The computing system of claim 11, wherein the deinterlacing function comprises a spatially variant deinterlacing function.

13. The computing system of claim 12, wherein the step of executing the deinterlacing function comprises applying the spatially variant deinterlacing function to one or more pixels in a current frame of the video data to generate one or more deinterlaced pixels based on characteristics of the video data associated with one or more pixels in a previous frame of the video data that correspond to the one or more pixels in the current frame of the video data.

14. The computing system of claim 13, wherein the step of executing the deinterlacing function comprises performing a bob operation, a blend operation, or a weave operation on the one or more pixels in the current frame of the video data.

15. The computing system of claim 11, wherein the deblocking function comprises a spatially dependent deblocking function.

16. The computing system of claim 15, wherein the step of executing the deblocking function comprises applying the spatially dependent deblocking function to one or more pixels in a current frame of the video data to generate one or more deblocked pixels, wherein a deblocked pixel in the one or more deblocked pixels is generated based on whether the position of a pixel in the one or more pixels in the current frame corresponds to a horizontal block encoding boundary.

17. The computing system of claim 16, wherein the deblocked pixel in the one or more deblocked pixels is generated further based on whether the position of the pixel in the one or more pixels in the current frame corresponds to a vertical block encoding boundary.

18. The computing system of claim 16, wherein the position of each pixel in the current frame comprises an X, Y position within the current frame.

19. The computing system of claim 16, wherein the color of the deblocked pixel is based on the color of one or more pixels in the current frame that reside within an M by N region of pixels in the current frame associated with the deblocked pixel, where M and N are integers.

20. The computing system of claim 11, wherein the function call comprises a codeword that, when executed by the programmable graphics processor, causes the programmable graphics processor to perform the steps of:

executing the deinterlacing function on the video data when the deinterlacing enable field is activated;

executing the scaling function on the video data when the scaling enable field is activated;

executing the deblocking function on the video data when the deblocking enable field is activated; and

executing the color space conversion function on the video data when the color space conversion enable field is activated.