Video format for digital video recorder

• US 9,215,402 B2
• Filed: 04/07/2014
• Issued: 12/15/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 09/10/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Towner, Paul, Kennedy, Courtney, Ubillos, Randy, Mullins, Greg, Wallace, Greg, Chou, Peter, Tong, Xin
• Primary Examiner(s): Vaughn, Jr., William C
• Assistant Examiner(s): ADAMS, EILEEN M
• Application Number:
  US14/247,099
• Publication Number:
  US 20140301720A1
• Time in Patent Office: 617 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/00 Editing; Indexing; Addressing; Timing or synchronising; Monitoring; Measuring tape travel
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/107 between spatial and temporal predictive coding, e.g. picture refresh
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/11 among a plurality of spatial predictive coding modes
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/12 Selection from among a plurality of transforms or standards, e.g. selection between discrete cosine transform [DCT] and sub-band transform or selection between H.263 and H.264
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/162 User input
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/174 the region being a slice, e.g. a line of blocks or a group of blocks
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/176 the region being a block, e.g. a macroblock
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/59 involving spatial sub-sampling or interpolation, e.g. alteration of picture size or resolution
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/765 Interface circuits between an apparatus for recording and another apparatus
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/917 for bandwidth reduction
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/0117 involving conversion of the spatial resolution of the incoming video signal for graphics images G09G2340/0407

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a video recording device for capturing a video clip. The video recording device receives a selection of a non-temporally compressed encoding scheme from several different encoding schemes for encoding the video clip. The different encoding schemes include at least one temporally compressed encoding scheme and at least the selected non-temporally compressed encoding scheme. The video recording device captures the video clip as several frames. The video recording device non-temporally encodes each of the frames as several slices. The slices of a particular frame are for decoding by several processing units of a video decoding device. The video recording device stores the video clip in a storage.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

at a video recording device, receiving a video clip comprising a plurality of video images;

identifying a plurality of video formats comprising a first video format for encoding video images at least partially in an interframe format and a second video format for encoding video images in an intraframe only format;

encoding a video image using the second video format by;

assigning a plurality of slices of the video image to a plurality of processing units of the video recording device; and

encoding the plurality of slices using the second video format, wherein at least two of the slices in the plurality of slices are encoded simultaneously using two different processing units of the video recording device.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising defining a graphical user interface for the video recording device, the graphical user interface for enabling a user to select between the first and second video formats.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the video images encoded using the second video format is encoded as a same number of slices.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the second video format has a resolution of 1280×

720.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein each video image comprises a particular width, wherein the method further comprises reducing the particular width of each video image prior to encoding the plurality of slices of the video image using the second video format.

6. A non-transitory computer readable medium of a video recording device, the computer readable medium storing a computer program which when executed by at least one processor of the video recording device captures a video clip, the computer program comprising sets of instructions for:

receiving a selection of a non-temporally compressed encoding scheme from a plurality of different encoding schemes for encoding the video clip, the different encoding schemes comprising at least one temporally compressed encoding scheme and at least the selected non-temporally compressed encoding scheme;

capturing the video clip as a plurality of video frames;

encoding a video frame using the selected non-temporally compressed encoding scheme by;

assigning a plurality of slices of the video frame to a plurality of processing units of the video recording device; and

non-temporally encoding the plurality of slices, wherein at least two of the slices in the plurality of slices are non-temporally encoded simultaneously using two different processing units of the video recording device; and

storing the video clip in a storage of the video recording device.

7. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 6, wherein the temporally compressed encoding scheme is an encoding scheme in which at least one video frame of a captured video clip is encoded with reference to at least one other video frame of the video clip and the non-temporally compressed encoding scheme is an encoding scheme in which each video frame of a captured video clip is encoded without reference to any other video frames of the video clip.

8. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 6 further comprising appending geolocation metadata to the video clip indicating a location at which the video clip was captured.

9. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 6 further comprising a set of instructions for reducing a particular width of each video image prior to non-temporally encoding the plurality of slices of the video frame.

10. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 9, wherein the set of instructions for non-temporally encoding comprises sets of instructions for:

dividing each frame into a plurality of 8×

8 macroblocks; and

performing a discrete cosine transform on each of the 8×

8 macroblocks.

11. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 6, wherein the storage comprises one of a flash memory and a hard disk.

12. A non-transitory computer readable medium of a video recording device, the computer readable medium storing a computer program which when executed by at least one processor of the video recording device captures a video clip, the computer program comprising sets of instructions for:

receiving a video clip captured by the video recording device as a set of video images, each video image having a particular width;

reducing the width of the video images captured by the video recording device;

after the width of the video images captured by the video recording device has been reduced, encoding each of the reduced-width video images without reference to any other video image captured by the video recording device, wherein each of the reduced-width video images is encoded as a plurality of slices using a plurality of processing units of the video recording device; and

storing the reduced-width video images in a storage of the video recording device.

13. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 12, wherein the set of instructions for encoding the reduced-width video images comprises a set of instructions for performing all intra prediction modes for each 4×

4array of the reduced-width video images.

14. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 13, wherein the set of instructions for performing an intra prediction mode for a particular 4×

4 array comprises a set of instructions for comparing the particular 4×

4 array to a previously encoded 4×

4 array.

15. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 12, wherein the set of instructions for encoding the reduced-width video images comprises sets of instructions for:

dividing each reduced-width video image into a plurality of 8×

8 macroblocks; and

performing a discrete cosine transform on each of the 8×

8 macroblocks.

16. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 12, wherein the storage comprises a flash memory.

17. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 12, wherein the storage comprises a hard disk.