Pulse or digital communications – Bandwidth reduction or expansion – Television or motion video signal
Reexamination Certificate
2000-08-01
2001-12-11
Kelley, Chris (Department: 2613)
Pulse or digital communications
Bandwidth reduction or expansion
Television or motion video signal
Reexamination Certificate
active
06330281
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to video compression techniques, and more particularly, to video compression techniques suitable for use with three-dimensional content such as three-dimensional virtual reality environments.
With the increasing popularity of network-based applications, compression of synthetic animation image sequences for efficient transmission is more important than ever. For long sequences, the latency time of downloading the compressed file may be prohibitive, even if the overall compression ratio is high. A better network-based compression scheme may involve partitioning the compressed sequence into two parts. The first part, or header, may be small enough to be downloaded within an acceptable initialization time, while the second part may be transmitted as a stream. The compressed data may be broken up into a stream of data that may be processed along the network pipeline—i.e., the compressed data may be transmitted from one end and received, decoded, and displayed at the other end. Streaming necessarily requires that all the pipeline stages operate in real time. Network bandwidth is the most constrained resource along the pipeline. The main challenge is therefore to reduce the stream bandwidth enough to accommodate the network bandwidth constraint.
Standard video compression techniques like MPEG, are generally insufficient for steaming in low-bandwidth environments. For example, average MPEG frames are typically about 2-6K bytes in size for moderate frame resolutions. Assuming a network with a sustained transfer rate of 2K bytes per second, a reasonable quality of a few frames per second cannot be achieved.
A significant improvement in compression ratio is still necessary for streaming video in real time.
It is an object of the present invention to provide improved video compression schemes.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide video compression schemes that allow high-quality content to be streamed over relatively low-bandwidth network connections.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In accordance with the present invention, a video compression system is provided.
The system may include a video source for providing video. The video source may be based on a real-life camera. For example, the video source may be a real-life camera that provides digital images and range or distance information. The video source may also involve the generation of animations or other three-dimensional virtual reality content. Such content may include, for example, a three-dimensional virtual world that is presented from the point-of-view of a user at a virtual camera position. Model and animation data may be provided by the video source. If desired, other suitable video capture or playback equipment may be used as the video source.
Video content from the video source may be encoded by an encoder and decoded by a decoder. Video decoded by the decoder may be presented to a user on a display device.
If desired, the encoder may be implemented on a server and the decoder may be implemented on a client. The server and client may communicate over a relatively low-bandwidth network connection (e.g., a standard dial-up modem connection on the Internet or the like). A user at the client may interact with the encoder in real time by providing user inputs (e.g., desired movements in the virtual reality environment) to the encoder over the network connection.
Further features of the invention, its nature and various advantages will be more apparent from the accompanying drawings and the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments.
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Arad Uri
Cohen-Or Daniel
Mann Yair
Monsa Assaf
Shemer Yehuda
Fish & Neave
Kelley Chris
Richfx Ltd.
Vo Tung
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