JPH0564227A - Motion adaptive video printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make it possible to automatically set a mode and to obtain a high quality picture. CONSTITUTION:After video signals are demodulated to Y, R-Y, B-Y or R, G, B signals in a Y/C separation/color demodulation block 2, the signals are converted into digital signals in an A/D converter 3 and are stored in a field memory for add 6 and a field memory for even 7 through memory controllers 4, 5. The difference of the video data of the both field memories 6, 7 is calculated and detected, a selection processing of a field/frame is performed in a switch/computing element 10 and a print processing is performed.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a motion adaptive video printer for video signals of the NTSC / PAL system or the like.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing the structure of a conventional video printer. Reference numeral 1 in FIG. 5 is an input terminal for inputting a video signal of the NTSC / PAL system or the like, and this video signal is led to the Y / C separation / color demodulation block 2. There is.

When a video signal is input, the Y / C separation / color demodulation block 2 separates it into a luminance signal and a color signal, and then performs color demodulation, and Y (luminance signal), RY, BY. (Chroma signal), or R (red), G (green), B (blue) signals.

The output of the Y / C separation / color demodulation block 2 is input to an analog / digital (hereinafter referred to as A / D) converter 3, where it is digitized and stored in a memory controller 4 (ODD) and a memory controller 5 ( E
VEN).

The memory controller 4 controls the field memory 6 to store digital signals of odd fields, and the memory controller 5 controls the field memory 7 to store digital signals of even fields. It has become. Two of these field memories 6 and 7 form a field memory.

The outputs of the memory controllers 4 and 5 are input to the switch / arithmetic unit 10. The switch arithmetic unit 10 is controlled by a CPU (central processing unit) 8. The CPU 8 controls the switch / arithmetic unit 10 by a control signal 9 according to a field mode or a frame mode. There is.

That is, the CPU 8 controls the control signal 9
To the switch / calculator 10 to determine the mode, select the data in the field memories 6 and 7 through the memory controllers 4 and 5 for calculation, and the calculation result data 11 is the thermal head drive block 12
Is input to the thermal head drive block 12, and the thermal head 13 is driven by the output of the thermal head drive block 12. The thermal head drive block 12 and the thermal head 13 form a print processing unit.

Next, the operation will be described. Input terminal 1
The input video signal of the NTSC / PAL system or the like enters the Y / C separation / color demodulation block 2, is separated into a luminance signal and a color signal, and is color-demodulated to be Y, RY, BY.
Or it is converted into R, G, B signals and the A / D converter 3
Sent to.

In this A / D converter 3, these Y, RY, R-B-Y or R, G, B signals are digitally converted, and the digital signals are stored in the field memories by the memory controllers 4 and 5. It is stored in 6 and 7, respectively.

Further, the control signal 9 is output from the CPU 8 to the switch / operation unit 10, and the control signal 9 is input to the switch / operation unit 10, whereby
Determines field mode or frame mode.

As a result of the determination, in the case of the field mode, the field memory 6 or the field memory 7 is selected, and the memory contents of the selected field memory 6 or 7 are selected by the memory controller 4 or 5 to switch / switch. Input to the arithmetic unit 10.

The switch / arithmetic unit 10 performs arithmetic processing on the input storage data of the field memory 6 or 7 and transfers the data 1 to the thermal head drive block 12.
3 is output and the thermal head 13 is driven by the thermal head drive block 12 to obtain a hard copy.

When this field mode is selected, the average value of upper and lower pixels is generally used as the interpolation data.

Here, since the video signal of the NTSC / PAL system or the like is an interlace signal, if the frame mode is selected when the video content is moving, the time difference between the fields of the video is selected. In the case of the NTSC signal, so-called blurring occurs in 1/60 seconds, and a satisfactory image quality cannot be obtained.

On the other hand, in the still image, the field mode has half the vertical resolution as compared with the frame mode, and therefore the image quality is inferior.

[0016]

The conventional video printer is constructed as described above, and the field mode is selected for a moving image and the frame mode is selected for a still image according to the image content stored by the user. It had to be complicated.

Further, when only a part of the entire screen is moving, there is a problem in that it is difficult to select a field / frame in terms of image quality.

As an approximation technique, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2-109
According to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 483, motion detection is performed in a TV image display circuit by a CRT of a TV receiver having a printer buffer, image quality is improved in pixel units, and a frame memory (when not moving) and a line memory (moving It is disclosed to carry out the switching.

The invention of claim 1 is to solve the above problems, and an object thereof is to obtain a motion adaptive video printer in which the field / frame mode setting can be liberalized.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a motion adaptive video printer capable of removing switching noise near the switching threshold level and performing smoother and more natural switching.

It is an object of the invention of claim 3 to obtain a motion adaptive video printer capable of significantly increasing the arithmetic processing speed.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a motion adaptive video printer capable of continuous mode setting in screen units.

[0023]

The motion adaptive video printer according to the invention of claim 1 is provided with a detecting means capable of adaptively setting a mode.

A motion adaptive video printer according to a second aspect of the present invention is provided with a detection means for detecting a motion of a stored image and continuously calculating a field / frame in a pixel unit according to the amount of the motion. It is a thing.

The motion adaptive video printer according to the third aspect of the present invention estimates the motion amount of the video by accumulating the motions of the stored video over the entire screen, and field-by-screen field units according to the motion amount. / A detection means for switching the frame in stages is provided.

A motion adaptive video printer according to a fourth aspect of the present invention accumulates the motion amount of the image stored in the entire screen,
A detection means for continuously calculating a field / frame in screen units according to the accumulated value is provided.

[0027]

According to the first aspect of the present invention, the field / frame mode is set adaptively by detecting the movement of the video contents stored by the detecting means.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, the detection means multiplies the stored image motion amount to continuously calculate the field / frame in pixel units.

The detection means according to the third aspect of the present invention accumulates the motions of the stored image on the entire screen and calculates the accumulated value.

The detection means according to the invention of claim 4 accumulates the stored motion of the image on the entire screen, and continuously calculates the field / frame in screen units according to the accumulated value.

[0031]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT An embodiment of a motion adaptive video printer of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the embodiment. The constituent members in FIG. 1 are the same as those in the conventional example shown in FIG. 5, and the same reference numerals are allotted to the same portions. However, as is clear from comparison between FIG. 1 and FIG. Then, the outputs of the field memories 6 and 7 are input to the CPU 8.

Thus, the movement of the video contents stored in the field memories 6 and 7 can be detected by the CPU 8, and the field / frame mode can be adaptively set by the detection. .. Other configurations are the same as those in FIG.

Next, the operation will be described. First, the operation corresponding to the invention of claim 1 will be described. In FIG.
The video signal guided to the input terminal 1 is input to the Y / C separation / color demodulation block 2.

In this Y / C separation / color demodulation block 2,
When a video signal is input, this video signal is Y, RY,
It is demodulated into BY or R, G, B signals and output to the A / D converter 3.

In the A / D converter 3, these Y, RY, BY and R, G, B signals are converted into digital signals and output to the memory controllers 4, 5. The digital signals A / D converted by the memory controllers 4 and 5 are stored in the field memory 6 (OD
D) and the field memory 7 (EVEN).

The data stored in the field memories 6 and 7 is input to the switch / calculator 10 by the control signal 9 of the CPU 8 and the field / frame selection processing is performed. The field / frame selection data 11 is sent to the thermal head drive block 12.

This thermal head drive block 12
Converts the field / frame-selected data 11 into head gradation data, and finally outputs the data to the thermal head 13, which is printed out by the thermal-controlled thermal head 13 to obtain a hard copy.

Here, points different from the conventional example shown in FIG. 5 will be described. CPU8 is a memory controller 4, 5
The field memory 6 and the field memory 7 can be directly accessed via the, and the stored video data can be read, operated, and written.

Therefore, the CPU 8 can detect the motion by calculating the difference between the two fields of odd number and even number. Since the two field memories 6 and 7 are used to detect the motion, there is no data of the same coordinates, but the motion can be detected quite accurately by the following intra-frame motion detection algorithm, for example. ..

FIG. 2 is an enlarged view of the image. The vertical direction of FIG. 2 represents scanning lines, and the horizontal direction represents horizontal sampling. Since they are interlaced in the vertical direction, the scanning lines of odd and even fields are alternated. Here, it is noted that if the pixel of the odd field is C, the upper part is U, and the lower part is D, C, U, and D are values from 0 to 1.

In this way, the image can generally be expected to have a relationship of C≈ (U + D) / 2 (1). Assuming that the difference between both sides of the equation (1) is α = | C− (U + D) / 2 | (2), the difference α is an odd or even inter-field difference, which can be inferred as a motion amount. Of course, this difference α
Besides, an effective motion detection method can be obtained.

Using this motion amount, for example, the difference α,
By setting a certain threshold level,
As shown in, the data of each pixel C in the odd field is selected by the switch 14, or the pixel U in the even field and the pixel D in the odd field are added by the adder 15 (U +
D), divide this by 1/2 divider 16 (U +
D) / 2, and whether the data of (U + D) / 2 is selected by the switch 14 is switched in pixel units to obtain C1 data.

The configuration shown in FIG. 3 is a detailed view of the switch / arithmetic unit 10 of FIG. The control signal 9 for controlling the switch / calculator 10 is output from the CPU 8, and the CPU 8 obtains the control signal 9 by calculating the movement amount for each pixel. For example, this operation is performed only on odd fields, and even fields always use original data.

Next, a second embodiment of the present invention will be described. The second embodiment corresponds to the invention of claim 2. In the first embodiment, the pixel C
The data (U + D) / 2 and the data (U + D) / 2 are selected by the switch 14 in an alternative manner. However, in the second embodiment, the selection of the two data is performed as shown in FIG. By multiplying α, (1−α) by using one of the multipliers 17 and 18, the C data and the (U + D) / 2 data can be continuously varied in pixel units, so that a value near the switching threshold level can be obtained. Switching noise can be eliminated.

That is, the multiplier 17 uses the C data and (1-
α) and the multiplier 18 calculates (U + D) / 2 data and α
And the outputs of the two multipliers 17 and 18 are added by an adder 19 to obtain C1 data. The multiplication coefficient α, (1-α) here is calculated for each pixel by the CPU 8, and the control signal from the CPU 8 causes
It is given to the switch / arithmetic unit 10 of FIG. The adder 15 and the divider 16 are the same as in FIG.

Here, the multiplication coefficient is α, (1−α), but a more effective process can be performed by giving various weighted coefficients or applying fuzzy theory or the like. Obtainable.

Next, a third embodiment of the present invention will be described. The third embodiment corresponds to the invention of claim 3. In the first and second embodiments described above, switching and calculation are performed in pixel units, but switching can also be performed in screen units.

The third embodiment is an embodiment in which switching is performed in screen units. That is, the movement amount of each pixel, for example, α is accumulated over the entire screen, and the accumulated value Σα
Is calculated by the CPU 8. Here, by setting the threshold level of the cumulative value Σα, the fields / frames are switched over the entire screen.

In the third embodiment, the CPU 8 does not need to switch the switch / arithmetic unit 10 of FIG. 1 pixel by pixel, and the control signal 9 can be kept constant.
This has the effect of significantly improving the calculation processing speed.

Next explained is the fourth embodiment of the invention. The fourth embodiment corresponds to the invention of claim 4. In the third embodiment, the field / frame mode is set step by step in screen units, but in the fourth embodiment, the mode is continuously changed in screen units.

In order to continuously change the mode in such a screen unit, the multiplication coefficient (1
-Α) and α are fixed over the entire screen, and continuous mode setting is performed for each screen.

In the above first to fourth embodiments, the case where the movement detecting means is realized by the CPU 8 is illustrated, but this may be implemented by a logic circuit.

Further, in each of the above-mentioned embodiments, the switch / calculator 10 is implemented as a logic circuit as the switching arithmetic means, but it can be realized by software in the CPU 8.

[0054]

As described above, according to the first aspect of the invention, the motion of the video content stored in the field memory is detected by the detecting means, and the pixel having the motion is detected in the field (NTSC).
The print processing is performed with 262 lines in the case of, and the stationary pixel is a frame (525 lines in the case of NTSC).
Since the print processing is performed in step S1 and the field / frame is switched on a pixel-by-pixel basis, the field / frame mode setting can be automated and the complexity of the mode setting can be eliminated.

According to the second aspect of the invention, the motion of the video content stored in the field memory is detected by the detecting means, and the field / frame is continuously switched in pixel units according to the detected motion amount. Since the calculation is performed by the means, the switching can be performed more smoothly and naturally, and the switching noise near the switching threshold level can be removed.

According to the third aspect of the present invention, the motion amount of the video image stored in the field memory is accumulated on the entire screen by the detecting means, so that the motion amount of the video image is inferred and the motion amount of the video image is displayed on a screen unit basis. Since the field / frame is switched stepwise by the switching calculation means,
It is not necessary to switch in pixel units, and the control signal can be kept constant. Therefore, the calculation processing speed can be significantly improved.

According to the fourth aspect of the present invention, the motion of the image stored in the field memory is accumulated on the entire screen by the detecting means, and the mode is continuously changed on a screen-by-screen basis by the switching calculating means according to the accumulated value. Since I configured it to be variable,
Intermediate processing between both modes is also possible, and a hard copy of a higher quality image can be obtained.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a motion adaptive video printer according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a plan view showing the C pixel of the video content in an enlarged manner to explain the embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a detailed configuration of a switch / arithmetic unit in FIG.

4 is a block diagram showing another detailed configuration of the switch / arithmetic unit shown in FIG. 1. FIG.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a conventional video printer.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Input Terminal 2 Y / C Separation / Color Demodulation Block 3 A / D Converter 4 Memory Controller 5 Memory Controller 6 Field Memory 7 Field Memory 8 CPU 10 Switch / Calculator 12 Thermal Head Drive Block 13 Thermal Head 14 Switch 15 Adder 16 Divider 17 Multiplier 18 Multiplier 19 Adder

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A video signal is a luminance signal and a chroma signal or R.I. G. Y / C separation / color demodulation block for demodulating to B signal, analog / digital converter for digitally converting the output of this Y / C separation / color demodulation block, and odd number for storing the output of this analog / digital converter through a memory controller Field memory for even numbers and field memory for even numbers, detection means for accessing the field memories and calculating the difference between the video data stored in the field memories to detect the movement of the video contents, and the above-mentioned video contents Switching calculation means for switching a field and a frame on a pixel-by-pixel basis based on the amount of motion of the pixel, and a moving pixel switched by this switching calculation means is printed in the field, and a stationary pixel is printed in a frame. Adaptive video with print processing means for performing Printer. 2. The detecting means detects a motion of the video data stored in the odd-numbered field memory and the even-numbered field memory, and continuously detects the field / pixel in pixel units according to the amount of the motion. The motion adaptive video printer according to claim 1, wherein a frame is calculated. 3. The detection means accumulates the amount of motion of the video data stored in the odd-numbered field memory and the even-numbered field memory over the entire screen to thereby determine a pixel according to the amount of motion of the image data. 2. The motion adaptive video printer according to claim 1, wherein the field / frame is calculated step by step in units. 4. The detector according to claim 1, wherein the detection means accumulates the amount of motion of the image stored in the entire screen and continuously calculates a field / frame in the entire screen according to the accumulated value. Motion adaptive video printer.