Audio deceleration

• US 8,676,591 B1
• Filed: 12/13/2010
• Issued: 03/18/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 08/02/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Pereira, Rui Filipe Andrade, Gault, Andrew Buchanan
• Primary Examiner(s): MCFADDEN, SUSAN IRIS
• Application Number:
  US12/966,145
• Time in Patent Office: 1,191 Days
• Field of Search: 704/500
• US Class Current: 704/500
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/00 Speech or audio signals analysis-synthesis techniques for redundancy reduction, e.g. in vocoders; Coding or decoding of speech or audio signals, using source filter models or psychoacoustic analysis in musical instruments G10H
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/431 Generation of visual interfaces for content selection or interaction; Content or additional data rendering
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/439 Processing of audio elementary streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44209 Monitoring of downstream path of the transmission network originating from a server, e.g. bandwidth variations of a wireless network arrangements for maintenance or administration in data switching networks involving bandwidth and capacity management H04L41/0896
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4781 Games
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6125 involving transmission via Internet transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82

Abstract

An audio receiving system includes logic configured to reduce the accumulation of delays caused by the late arrival of audio packets. This logic is configured to accelerate or decelerate presentation of a resulting audio stream in response to the detection of late packets. The acceleration is discontinued once the effects of the late packets have been compensated for. The audio receiving system is typically applied to applications in which lag is undesirable. These can include web conferencing, telepresence, and online video games.

Claims

1. An audio system including a processor, comprising:

an input for receiving audio packets via a communication network;

audio monitoring logic for anticipating that one of the audio packets will be late;

audio decoding logic for converting the audio packets to an audio stream;

audio processing logic for decelerating a presentation rate of part of the audio stream to a user such that a potential gap in the audio stream resulting from late receipt of one of the audio packets is reduced or eliminated; and

an audio output for presenting the audio stream to the user at the decelerated presentation rate, wherein the system uses the processor to execute the logic.

2. The audio system of claim 1, wherein the audio decoding logic or the audio processing logic are further configured to overlay a filler sound in the gap.

3. The audio system of claim 1, wherein the audio decoding logic or the audio processing logic are further configured to overlay a filler sound on part of the audio stream immediately before or immediately after the gap.

4. The audio system of claim 1, wherein the audio processing logic is configured to decelerate the presentation by reducing a rate at which the audio stream is sampled.

5. A method of processing audio packets using a processor, the method comprising:

receiving a first audio packet via a communication network;

converting the first audio packet to part of an audio stream;

anticipating that a second audio packet will be received late and thereby cause a gap in the audio stream;

decelerating a rate at which the part of the audio stream is presented to a user based on the anticipation that the second audio packet; and

presenting the first audio packet to the user at the decelerated rate, wherein the method uses the processor to execute the method.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising accelerating the rate at which the first packet or subsequent packets are presented, after receiving the second audio packet.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein anticipating that the second audio packet will be received late is in response to an audio packet being received out of order, no audio packets being received for a predetermined amount of time, or a number of audio packets in a receive buffer.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein the step of anticipating that the second audio packet will be received late is performed before the step of receiving the first audio packet.

9. The method of claim 5, further comprising placing a filler sound in the gap, the filler sound being faded in over the part of the audio stream.

10. A method of communicating audio packets using a processor, the method comprising:

providing a computing instructions to a client over a communication network, the computing instructions being configured to;

anticipate that a second audio packet will be received late at the client and thereby cause a gap in an audio stream, and

decelerate a rate at which audio data received in a first audio packet is presented to a user based on the anticipation that the second audio packet will be late; and

providing a series of audio packets to the client over the communication network, the series of audio packets including the first audio packet and the second audio packet, and being configured to be decoded to the audio stream, the processor used to execute the method.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the computing instructions are further configured to receive the first audio packet via the communication network.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the computing instructions are further configured to convert the first audio packet to part of an audio stream.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the computing instructions are further configured to present the first audio packet to the user at the decelerated rate.

14. The method of claim 10, further comprising generating the audio packets.

15. The method of claim 10, wherein the computing instructions are configured to anticipate that the second audio packet will be received late by detecting when one of the series of audio packets is received out of order.

16. The method of claim 10, wherein the computing instructions are configured to anticipate that the second audio packet will be received late by monitoring how many audio packets are in a receive buffer.

17. The method of claim 10, wherein the computing instructions are configured to anticipate that the second audio packet will be received late by observing that predetermined time has passed since an audio packet has been received.

18. The method of claim 10, wherein the computing instructions are further configured to overlay filler sound on the audio data of the audio stream.

19. The method of claim 10, wherein the rate is decelerated by sampling the audio data at a lower rate.

20. The method of claim 10, wherein the computing instructions are configured to decelerate the rate in a stepwise manner.