System and method of filtering noise

• US 7,630,444 B1
• Filed: 09/30/2004
• Issued: 12/08/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/05/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Civanlar, Mehmet Reha, Puri, Atul
• Primary Examiner(s): Diep; Nhon T
• Application Number:
  US10/954,884
• Time in Patent Office: 1,895 Days
• Field of Search: 375/240.29
• US Class Current: 375/240.29
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 18/24 Classification techniques
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/136 Incoming video signal characteristics or properties
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/65 using error resilience
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/86 involving reduction of coding artifacts, e.g. of blockiness
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/21 Circuitry for suppressing or minimising disturbance, e.g. moiré or halo

Abstract

A system and method of removing noise in a bitstream is disclosed. The system and method are most applicable to removing noise in a bitstream wherein the bitstream is encoded after being segmented into portions based on predefined classifications or models. Based on the segment classifications, each segment or portion is encoded with a different encoder associated with the portion model and chosen from a plurality of encoders. The coded bit-stream for each segment includes information regarding which encoder was used to encode that segment. A circuit for removing noise in video content comprises a first filter connected to a first input switch and a first output switch, the first filter being in parallel with a first pass-through line, a second filter connected to a second input switch and a second output switch, the second filter connected in parallel with a second pass-through line, and a third filter connected to a third input switch in a third output switch. The third filter is connected in parallel with a third pass-through line, wherein the first output switch is connected to the second input switch and the second output switch is connected to the third input switch. The first input switch, first output switch, second input switch, second output switch, third input switch, and third output switch are controlled to either filter each video portion or not filter each video portion according to descriptors related to the video content.

Claims

1. A system for removing noise in video content divided into video portions, the system comprising:

a first filter being in parallel with a first pass-through line; and

a second filter connected in parallel with a second pass-through line, wherein the respective inputs and outputs of each of the first filter and the second filter are controlled to either filter each video portion or not filter each video portion according to descriptors related to the video content.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a third filter, wherein the input and output of the third filter are controlled with the respective inputs and outputs of the first filter and the second filter to either filter each video portion or not filter each video portion according to descriptors related to the video content.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the first filter is a blockiness removal filter.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the second filter is a ringing removal filter.

5. The system of claim 2, wherein the first filter is a blockiness removal filter, the second filter is a ringing removal filter and the third filter is a noise smoothing filter.

6. The system of claim 2, wherein the first filter is a blockiness removal filter, the second filter is a ringing removal filter and third filter is a noise rejection filter.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising a first plurality of filters in parallel with the first bypass line and wherein an output of the first plurality of filters and the first bypass line is connected to an input of the second filter and the second bypass line wherein for each video portion, filtering or bypassing is controlled according to descriptors related to the content of each video portion.

8. The system of claim 7, further comprising a plurality of third filters connects in parallel to a third bypass line, and wherein an output of the second filter and second bypass line is connected to an input to the third plurality of filters and third bypass line, wherein for each video portion, filtering or bypassing is controlled according to descriptors related to the content of each video portion.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein the first plurality of filters comprises blockiness removal filters.

10. The system of claim 7, wherein the second filter is a ringing removal filter.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the third plurality of filters comprises a noise smoothing filter and a noise rejection filter.

12. A tangible computer-readable storage medium storing instructions for controlling a computing device to remove noise from video content divided into video portions, the instructions comprising the steps:

receiving descriptors associated with each video portion; and

filtering using or bypassing at least one filter according to the received descriptors for each video portion.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein noise is removed from the video portions using a first filter having a first bypass line and a second filter having a second bypass line.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein each video portion is decoded by either a generic decoder or a decoder chosen from a plurality of decoders wherein each decoder of the plurality of the decoders is associated with a content model.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the instructions further comprise:

filtering using or bypassing the first filter according to the decoder used to decode each video portion; and

filtering using or bypassing the second filter according to the decoder used to decode each video portion.

16. A computer-readable medium storing instructions for controlling a computing device to removing noise from video content, the video content being divided into video segments, the instructions comprising the steps:

receiving descriptors associated with each video segment, the descriptors being related to characteristics of each video segment; and

for each video segment of the video content, determining whether to filter or bypass filtering based on the receipt descriptors for the respective video segment.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the step of determining whether to filter or bypass filtering occurs for a plurality of filters, each of the plurality of filters having a bypass line.