Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer-to-computer data modifying – Compressing/decompressing
Patent
1997-09-23
1999-12-07
Rinehart, Mark H.
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer-to-computer data modifying
Compressing/decompressing
709231, 370465, G06F 1314, H04J 108, H04L 502
Patent
active
059999853
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The storing and playing back of multimedia items of information (video, audio, data, and control items of information) on digital storage media is one of the most important functions in a multimedia electronic mail system, also called an electronic multimedia mail system. In a multimedia electronic mail system, each subscriber is provided with a separate electronic mail compartment (called a mailbox), in which messages sent by other mail subscribers are deposited as multimedia mail messages. Each subscriber can fetch the separate multimedia mail from his mail compartment at any time.
The electronic mail compartments are installed on large digital mass memories. Although the capacity of storable items of information on digital storage media is constantly growing, the large quantity of data of multimedia items of information continues to present a massive storage problem.
In relation to the known methods, the present inventive method leads to a substantially higher compression and to a more effective multiplexing of multimedia data streams in a multimedia electronic mail system (see Table 1).
In contrast, the method known as MPEG-1 (ISO/IEC 11172), with 1.5 Mbit/s, requires about 11 Mbytes of memory space for the storing of a multimedia message of one minute. Seen from the perspective of memory volume, the currently known methods for multimedia electronic mail are hardly suitable in practice.
TABLE 1 ______________________________________
Examples for the storage of multimedia mail messages
Playback time
with 512
kbit/s non-ime
with 128time
standard
kbit/s non-
ITU-R 601
(720 .times. 576)
(360 .times. 288)
image
image0 .times. 144)
resolution of
resolution of
H.263; G.728,
H.263;tion of
G.729; G.722
H.263;
audio;
G.723.1; 64
G.728; G.729
ISO/IEC
Medium (Mbytes):
kbit/s audio
audio
11172-3
______________________________________
Hard disk/
-- about 240 about 1 about 4
minute Mbyte/min
Mbyte/min
(average
for a mul-
timedia
mail
message
Sample 1,000
about 4,000
about 1,000
about 250 MM
hard disk:
MM messages
messages
______________________________________
A further advantage of inventive video and audio methods in relation to the known methods is that they relate to "symmetrical real-time compression/decompression methods." The symmetry holds both for the complexity of the coder, or, respectively, of the decoder, and for the time characteristic of the coding and decoding (i.e., the complexity of the coder and of the decoder are approximately equal, or, respectively, the time expense for the coding and decoding are also approximately equal and isochronous).
The quality of the MPEG-1 video and of the MPEG-1 audio is indeed better than that of the methods listed in Table 1, but what are thereby concerned are asymmetrical methods, which require a tedious and complicated coding. The only advantage lies in the simpler decoding. However, there are numerous applications in which a reduced video and audio quality is entirely sufficient (e.g., multimedia mail, video images with head and shoulders), in which, however, a real-time coding/decoding is required, with approximately equal coding/decoding complexity.
In the present invention, a terminal for electronic multimedia mail, an ITU-T H.324 videotelephone apparatus is proposed (FIG. 1). An advantage of the videotelephone terminal is that it already contains elements of the system, such as for example audio codec, video codec, multimedia multiplexer, multimedia control, which can be of benefit to the electronic multimedia mail system. It is true that the H.324 videotelephone is tailored to a GSTN, thus to an analog telephone network. However, the invention can also be used on other networks, in particular mobile communication networks and ISDN networks. For the terminal access to the electronic multimedia mail system, in the H.324 videotelephone an additional data channel is opened, in addition to the control channel for video, speech and H.245 videotel
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Rinehart Mark H.
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft
Thompson Marc D
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