Method for assisting video compression in a computer system

• US 20070013809A1
• Filed: 09/11/2006
• Published: 01/18/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 03/26/1998
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Round Rock Research LLC
• Original Assignee: Round Rock Research LLC
• Inventors: Klein, Dean
• Granted Patent: US 7,595,844 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/384.100
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/503 involving temporal prediction adaptive coding with adaptive selection between spatial and temporal predictive coding H04N19/107; adaptive coding with adaptive selection among a plurality of temporal predictive coding modes H04N19/109
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4143 embedded in a Personal Computer [PC]

Abstract

One embodiment of the present invention provides a method that facilitates compression of video data in a computer system by performing the time-consuming task of computing the difference between successive frames of video data independently from the central processing unit. This frees the often-overburdened central processing unit from performing this time-consuming compression operation and can thereby improve the handling of video data. Thus, one embodiment of the present invention can be characterized as a method thr compressing video data in a computer system. This method includes receiving a stream of data from a current video frame in the computer system. It also includes computing a difference frame from the current video frame and a previous video frame “on-the-fly as the current video frame streams into the computer system. The method additionally includes storing the difference frame in a memory in the computer system.

Claims

1. A method for compressing video data in a computer system comprising:

receiving a current video frame at a dedicated video input of a core logic chip;

computing at the core logic chip a difference frame from the current video frame and a previous video frame as the current video frame streams into the dedicated video input of the core logic chip, the previous video frame being received at the core logic chip as a previous current video frame and retained therein; and

storing the difference frame directly from the core logic chip to the system memory; and

retrieving the difference frame directly from the system memory for a processor to complete compression of the video data.

2. The method of claim 1, including storing the current video frame in the system memory in the computer system.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the current video frame is written over a previous video frame in the system memory.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein computing the difference frame includes computing an exclusive-OR between the current video frame and the previous video frame.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein computing the difference frame includes computing a difference between a block of data from the current video frame and a block of data from the previous video frame.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein storing the difference frame in memory includes storing the difference frame in the system memory using block transfers.

7. The method of claim 1, including compressing the video data using the difference frame to produce compressed video data.

8. The method of claim 1, including performing a color space conversion on the video data.

9. The method of claim 1, including using the video data in compressed form in a video teleconferencing system.

10. The method of claim 1, including using the compressed data in a video teleconferencing system.

11. The method of claim 1, including performing a color space conversion on the video data.