JPH0470257A - Facsimile equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve the using efficiency of a picture storage device by changing the coding compression mode of the picture information of a picture information file intercepting communication so that the compression efficiency of this picture information becomes the best CONSTITUTION:In case that abnormality is caused in a plotter 5, when an incoming call is detected, and the picture information is received, the picture information received at the time is stored directly in the picture storage device 8. Besides, a page control table is formed in respect of each page of the picture information, and simultaneously, a job control table is formed in respect of the stored picture information. When a system is in a communication stand-by state, and the plotter 5 is in a non-recordable state, a control part 1 reads out the page control table corresponding to a head page pointer, and refers to the contents of a compression mode flag, and decides the compression mode of re-compression. At that time, it judges the compression mode of the highest priority to be the compression mode of the re-compression. Then, when coding compression ratio is improved at that time, it updates the contents of the compression mode flag on the basis of a re-compression mode at that time.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a facsimile machine having a proxy reception function.

[Prior Art] When receiving image information, if the plotter is unable to record an image for some reason, the received image information is accumulated, and when the plotter becomes able to record an image, the image of the accumulated image information is recorded. Output.

2. Description of the Related Art Facsimile machines equipped with a so-called proxy reception function have been in practical use for some time.

Therefore, a facsimile machine equipped with a single-alternative reception function can receive image information even when the plotter cannot record an image, thereby improving the efficiency of use of the facsimile machine.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] However, in such a conventional device, an abnormality occurs in the plotter at night when, for example, production is concentrated when receiving one-picture information.
If the amount of image information that has been received by proxy becomes extremely large, such as when the plotter has been malfunctioning for a long time without being resolved until the next day, a situation may occur where it is no longer possible to receive the image information by proxy. there were.

The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and an object of the present invention is to provide a facsimile apparatus that can effectively utilize a proxy reception function.

[Means for Solving the Problems] The present invention creates a storage file in which the encoding compression mode of the stored proxy reception file is changed during communication standby,
If the data amount of the storage file is smaller than the data amount of the original proxy reception file, the control means changes the contents of the storage file to the contents of the proxy reception file.

[Operation] Therefore, since the amount of data in the proxy reception file can be reduced, the image storage function can be effectively utilized and one proxy reception can be performed more times.

[Embodiments] Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 shows a Group 3 facsimile machine according to one embodiment of the present invention.

In the figure, a control unit 1 performs control processing of each part of the facsimile machine and facsimile transmission control procedure processing, and a system memory 2 stores control processing programs and processing programs executed by the control unit 1. The parameter memory 3 is used to store various data necessary for executing the fax machine, and also constitutes the work area of the control section.The parameter memory 3 is used to store various information specific to this group 3 facsimile machine. It is.

The scanner 4 is for reading original images at a predetermined resolution, the plotter 5 is for recording and outputting images at a predetermined resolution, and the operation display section 6 is for operating this facsimile device. It consists of various operation keys and various displays.

The encoding/decoding unit 7 encodes and compresses a single picture signal, and also decodes the encoded and compressed picture information into the original picture signal, and uses MH, MR,
Three types of MMR can be arbitrarily selected. The image storage device f8 is for storing a large amount of encoded and compressed image information.

The group 3 facsimile modem 9 is for realizing the group 3 facsimile modem function, and has a low-speed modem function (V, 2) for exchanging transmission procedure signals.
1 modem) and a high-speed modem function (V, 29 modem, V, 27ter modem) mainly for exchanging image information.

A network control device 10 is for connecting this facsimile device to a public telephone line network, and is equipped with automatic call origination and reception functions.

These control unit 1, system memory 2, parameter memory 3, scanner 4, plotter 5. The operation display section 6, encoding/decoding section 71, image storage device 8, group 3 facsimile modem 9, and network control device 10 are connected to a system bus 11, and data exchange between these elements is possible. This is mainly performed via the system bus 11.

Also, network control equipment! 110 and Group 3 facsimile modem 9 are directly exchanged.

When the control unit 1 stores image information in the 5-image storage device 8,
A job management table as shown in FIG. 2(a) is created for each image file.

Also, regarding the image information of each page, see (b) in the same figure.
Create a page management table as shown in .

The job management table contains job identification information for identifying each job, mode information for indicating the transmission mode in which the image information was generated, and destination terminal identification information for identifying the transmission destination terminal. Communication time information for storing the time received, communication result information for storing the communication result, and compression mode conversion operation for reducing the amount of image information have been completed. Compression mode conversion completed. It consists of a flag, page number information indicating the number of pages of image information, and a first page pointer indicating the first address of the page management table that manages the first page of image information.

Here, the mode information stores identification information of transmission modes such as proxy reception, confidential reception, and time-specified transmission. The partner terminal identification information is set to the identification information notified by the partner terminal in the pre-transmission procedure.

The page management table contains page reference number information that shows the page reference number of the image information managed by the page management table, start address information that shows the previous address of the storage area of the image information, and data amount of the image information. A page that manages data amount information, image information compression mode information, compression mode flag for saving the compression mode conversion history, and image information for the next page of the image information. The next page pointer indicates the top address of the management table, and the top address information and data amount information are set to values based on the image storage method and image storage unit of the image storage device 8. The compression mode flag is data of a predetermined number of bits assigned to unique bits for each encoding method. In this case, uncompressed (raw data) is also assigned bits.

With the above configuration, when an incoming call is detected and image information is received when there is an abnormality in the plotter 5, the image information received at that time is directly stored in the image storage device 8.

Further, the above-mentioned page management table is formed for each page of image information, and the above-mentioned job management table is formed for the accumulated image information. At this time, the compression mode information of each page management table is set with information indicating the encoding method of the image information when stored, and the compression mode flag is set with a bit corresponding to the encoding method. Ru. Furthermore, the mode information of the job management table is set to indicate that proxy reception is required, and the compression mode conversion end flag is reset.

Now, when the control section I is in a communication standby state, it executes the processing shown in FIG. 3.

First, the job management table stored at that time is checked to see if there is a job management table in which data that warns of proxy reception is set in the content of the mode information (determination 101), and the result of determination 101 is When becomes No, this process is immediately terminated.

When the result of judgment 101 is YES, it is checked whether the plotter 5 is in a recordable state at that time (judgment 102), and when the result of judgment 102 is YES, it is checked whether or not the plotter 5 is in a recordable state at that time. The image information is read by referring to the contents of the page management table, and the image of the image information is recorded and output from the plotter 5.

Also, at this time, the image information of each page.

When decoding to the original image signal by the encoding/decoding unit 7, an encoding method corresponding to the content of the compression mode information of the page management table is set in the encoding/decoding unit 7.The result of judgment 102 is NO. If the compression mode conversion path γ flag in the job management table is set and the compression mode conversion has been completed (decision 104), if the result of determination 1.04 is NO, the first page is The page management table corresponding to the pointer is read (process 105), and the compression mode to be recompressed is determined by referring to the contents of the compression mode flag (process 10).
6).

At this time, the compression mode priority is set as, for example, raw data → MMR-+MR → MH, and among the bits that are not set among the compression mode flags, the compression mode with the highest priority is selected. Determine the compression mode to be recompressed.

Next, with the decoding mode of the encoding method corresponding to the compression mode information of the page management table set in the encoding/decoding unit 7, the image information of that page is sequentially transferred to the encoding/decoding unit 7. , and restore the raw data to the raw data, and temporarily store the raw data in the free space of the image storage device 8 (process 107
).

Next, with the encoding mode of the encoding method corresponding to the recompression mode determined in process 106 set in the encoding/decoding unit 7, the raw data formed in process 107 is sequentially transferred to the encoding/decoding unit 7. The encoded and compressed image information is stored in the free space of the image storage device 8 (process 108), and a page management table corresponding to the storage state of the image information after recompression is created. (process 109).

Then, the amount of data in the original page management table of the recompressed page and the page management table after recompression are compared to check whether the encoding compression rate has improved (decision 11O). The result is N.

based on the recompression mode at the time.
The contents of the compression mote flag are updated (process 111).

Next, it is checked whether all the compression modes have been checked for that page (decision 112), and when the result of determination 112 is No, the process returns to process 106 and the same process as described above is performed for the compression mode that has not been tried yet. I do.

When the result of judgment 112 is YES, it is determined whether valid data is stored in the next page pointer of the page management table and there is a next page (decision 11).
3) When the result of judgment 114 is YES, the page management table corresponding to the next page pointer is read out (process 114), and the process returns to process 106, where the same process as described above is performed for that page.

When the result of judgment 113 is NO, the compression mode conversion process has been completed for all pages of one image information file, so set the compression mode conversion completion flag in the job management table. 115) End this process. do.

In addition, when the compression rate improves and the result of judgment 110 becomes YES, the first page pointer or the page management table of the previous page is used to use the page management table after recompression as the page management table of that page. Process 116) to update the next page pointer, Judgment 11
Move to 2.

In this way, when the plotter 5 is not in a recordable state in the communication standby state, the encoding and compression mode of the image information of the image information file that is being received on behalf of is changed so that the compression efficiency of the image information is maximized. Since the change is made on a page-by-page basis, it is possible to limit the storage capacity that the same image information file occupies in the image storage device 8 to a minimum value, so that the usage efficiency of the image storage device 8 can be improved.

In the embodiment described above, the encoding compression mode with the highest compression efficiency is determined on a page-by-page basis, but it can also be determined on a line-by-line basis. In that case.

Identification information indicating the compression mode is added to the beginning of each line.

[Effects of the Invention] As explained above, according to the present invention, the amount of data in the proxy reception file can be reduced, so the efficiency of using the image storage function can be improved, and for example, it is possible to perform proxy reception more times. Get the effect of being able to do it.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a Group 3 facsimile apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2(a) is a schematic diagram showing an example of a job management table, and FIG. 2(b) is a schematic diagram showing an example of a page management table. The schematic diagram shown in FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an example of processing related to a proxy reception file executed during communication standby. ■...control unit, 2...system memory, 7...encoding/decoding unit, 8...image storage device. Figure 1

Claims (1)

[Claims] When a facsimile machine equipped with a proxy reception function is on standby for communication, a storage file is created by changing the encoding compression mode of the stored proxy reception file, and the data amount of the stored file is equal to the data amount of the original proxy reception file. 1. A facsimile apparatus comprising: a control means for changing the contents of the stored file to the contents of a substitute reception file if the file is smaller than .