Television – Camera – system and detail – Combined image signal generator and general image signal...
Reexamination Certificate
1996-10-23
2001-01-23
Ho, Tuan (Department: 2712)
Television
Camera, system and detail
Combined image signal generator and general image signal...
C348S220100, C348S207110, C348S222100
Reexamination Certificate
active
06177956
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to digital camera technology and also relates more particularly to a system and method for correlating processing data and image data within a digital camera device.
2. Description of the Background Art
An important digital still-camera performance feature is the number of captured images that can be stored in the camera's finite memory. To maximize the image-carrying capacity of digital still-cameras, it is desirable to compress the images prior to storage. Conventional digital cameras typically perform image processing on the captured raw image data and then use a high-quality image compression routine (such as JPEG) to compress the image data.
Furthermore, digital cameras may frequently be required to capture and concurrently process multiple successive sets of captured image data. Each captured image, however, has important related information which may be needed during the image processing and compression operations, as well as subsequently. Examples of such processing and compression data might include camera settings (e.g., focus, aperture, and white-balance information), time and date of image capture and image processing parameters.
Each captured image potentially has a different set of relevant processing information. Therefore, each captured image within a digital camera may require a separate and unique set of processing data. Furthermore, to permit effective access to these unique sets of processing and compression data, each of the sets of captured image data and the corresponding processing data must be linked together. Efficient access to the processing data at the appropriate time is thus an important feature of modern digital cameras. Therefore, what is needed is an improved system and method for correlating processing data and image data within a digital camera device.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is a system and method for correlating processing data and image data within a digital camera device. In the present invention, an imaging device captures an image in response to an image capture request and responsively produces corresponding raw image data which is temporarily stored into a frame buffer. A data cell manager then builds a corresponding data cell containing various types of processing data which the data cell manager links to the captured raw image data. The processing data may include information such as image-capture settings, image size, user tags and image-processing parameters. The data cell is preferably stored in working memory within the camera DRAM.
A first RAM spooler then typically transfers the raw image data into an individual image data file within a RAM disk in the camera DRAM. Next, the data cell manager makes a copy of the data cell in working memory and places the copy into the image data file stored in the RAM disk for recovery purposes. The image data in the frame buffer is then deleted to allow a camera user to capture another image.
A first flash spooler next transfers the raw image data file from the RAM disk to a flash memory which preferably is a removable flash disk. An image processor device then accesses, processes and compresses the raw image data using the corresponding processing data stored in the data cell. The image processor device may then directly store the compressed data into a compressed image data file on the RAM disk, or alternately, a second RAM spooler may store the compressed image data into a compressed image data file on the RAM disk. The cell manager then stores selected necessary processing data from the corresponding data cell into the compressed image file. The cell manager also deletes unnecessary processing data from the data cell stored in working memory. A second flash spooler then transfers the compressed image data file from the RAM disk to the flash memory.
The data cell thus allows specific camera settings which exist at image capture time to be effectively saved and linked to the corresponding image data, thereby permitting subsequent changes of the camera settings without losing those camera settings previously saved in the data cell. The present invention also allows the camera device to recover from disruptive events such as power failures which threaten to damage the captured image data. Following a disruptive event, the data cell manager may locate the copy of the data cell which is stored in the image data file and then use this copied data cell to rebuild the original data cell stored within working memory in the camera DRAM. Once the original data cell has been reconstructed, the camera may then successfully complete the processing, compression and storage operations for the captured image data.
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Martyn Williams, Review-NEC PC-DC401 Digital Still Camera, AppleLink Newbytes, Mar. 15, 1996, pp. 1-3.
Anderson Eric C.
Masukawa Mike M.
Flashpoint Technology, Inc.
Ho Tuan
Sawyer Law Group LLP
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