JPH0946657A - Closed caption decoder - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To display a caption by characters being caption information without hiding a video image itself. SOLUTION: An input video signal is given to a caption data extract section 1 and a memory 6 and an extracted caption is generated into character information by a decoder section 3. A video image given to the memory 6 is given to a memory read control section 5, by which a size of the image is set at a display size setting section 4 by means of a selection key 9 and processed by a microcomputer 2 so as not to be overlapped on the character information on a screen and the result is outputted as a video signal. The video signal and a prescribed video signal and the character information received for a selector 7 are given to display control section 8, in which one image pattern by the video signal with a caption is generated.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a caption decoder device capable of receiving a caption broadcast, and more particularly, to a device for displaying the same screen separately for video and characters (caption information).

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In the United States, there is a system capable of displaying subtitles so that a person with a hearing loss can enjoy TV broadcasting and video software in the same manner as a normal person. This system is called closed captioning. On the transmitting side, the caption signal containing the binarized signal that is the caption information is superimposed on 21 lines during the vertical blanking period of the video signal such as a television signal, and on the receiving side. A caption decoder device extracts the caption signal, decodes the binarized signal of the caption signal as caption information, and the caption information is displayed in synchronization with the video.

The users of closed captions are mainly hearing-impaired people, but in recent years, in Japan, people who learn English have a VTR equipped with a closed caption decoder.
And LD have come to be used as language teaching materials. 6 and 7 are examples of screen display by a conventional device of this type. In the figure, 20 is a video of the software,
Reference numeral 21 is Japanese subtitles, and 22 is English subtitles which are caption information. For example, when viewing software with Japanese subtitles, if only Japanese subtitles are displayed, as shown in FIG. 6, and if English subtitles that are caption information are added to this Japanese subtitle, At the same time, as in 7, English and Japanese are displayed, and you can study while comparing them. However, in the conventional technology as described above, if the display is performed so that the Japanese and English subtitles do not overlap with each other, the video software image is hidden by the subtitle, which hinders the viewing of the video itself. .

[0004]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a closed caption decoder device capable of displaying a caption of characters, which is caption information, without hiding the video itself. To do.

[0005]

In order to solve the above problems, the invention according to claim 1 of the present application extracts a binary signal of a caption superimposed in a vertical blanking period of a video signal and decodes it. In the closed caption decoder device that displays the decoded character information on the screen together with the video by the video signal, a memory for storing the video signal and the screen are divided according to the video signal and the text information. A processing unit for controlling reading of a video signal from the memory and outputting character data;
A closed caption decoder device comprising display control means for displaying the output of the processing means as a video signal and character information on the screen, and displaying closed captions with subtitled software , It is possible to display text subtitles that are caption information without hiding the video.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the first aspect of the invention, the display size setting means for setting the display size of the video signal is provided, and the memory read control is performed by the display size setting means. A closed caption decoder device that reads out the video signal of the memory with a set size is formed, and in addition to the operation of the invention of claim 1, the size of the video itself is appropriately set, so that the user is more flexible. Can meet the demands of.

In the invention according to claim 3 of the present application, in the invention according to claim 2, the display size setting means sets the size according to the amount of the character information to be displayed on the same screen. In addition to the operation of the invention according to claim 2,
The size is automatically set in accordance with the amount of character information that is caption data, which improves convenience.

[0008]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a basic partial configuration of an embodiment of a closed caption decoder device of the present invention. In the figure, 1 is a caption data extracting unit. Reference numeral 2 is a microcomputer, and 3 is an internal configuration thereof, 3 is a decoder unit for generating character information from a caption signal, 4 is a display size setting unit, and 5 is a memory read control unit. Reference numeral 6 is a memory for storing a video signal, 7 is a selector for switching between video data and constant value data, 8 is a display control section for displaying the video signal and character information in synchronization, and 9 is a selection key.

Next, the operation will be described with reference to FIG. The input video signal is input to the caption data extracting unit 1 and the memory 6. The caption signal is superimposed on 21 lines during the vertical blanking period of the input video signal, and the caption signal is a clock line signal for synchronizing the decoding of the binarized signal, and a start bit following the clock line signal. It is composed of the following binary signal. The caption data extracting unit 1 extracts a binarized signal included in the caption signal superimposed on 21 lines in the vertical blanking period of the video signal. The binarized signal extracted by the caption data extracting unit 1 is input to the decoder unit 3. The decoder unit 3 decodes the input binarized signal to generate character information which is caption information. On the other hand, the video signal input to the memory 6 is stored for each frame. The video signal for one frame stored in the memory 6 is read from the memory 6 based on the setting of the display size setting unit 4 and input to the display control unit 8.

Next, the operation of reading data from the memory 6 will be described in detail. FIG. 3 schematically shows an example of the memory 6, which is a memory of 640 × 480 × 24 bits. The display size setting operation is performed as follows. The setting is performed by the selection key 9, for example. One example thereof will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. First, it is determined whether or not the display size selected by operating the selection key 9 is changed (step S1). When changing the display size, whether the area ratio is 9/16 (step S2), whether the area ratio is 16/25 (step S3), and whether the area ratio is 1/4 (step) S4)
Is determined. Operation described above (step S2 to step S
4) is repeated until the area ratio is determined. When the display size is not changed, the default value of the display size is read (step S5). Then, the display size is set (step S6) and the default value is changed (step S7). As described above, the display size can be set by operating the selection key 9.

Next, the memory read control unit 5 thins out and reads out the data based on the set display size. For example, three columns are read out, one column is skipped, and the next three columns are read out. In FIG. 3, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, ...
.. and read it out. Similarly, with respect to a row, three rows are similarly read, one row is skipped, and the next three rows are read. FIG.
In, the reading is performed as 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, .... Note that when interlaced display is performed by such a reading method, even lines and odd lines are interchanged and the image becomes difficult to see, so processing may be performed in field units. The data size read from the memory 6 is 4
It becomes 80 × 360, and the memory read control unit 6 controls the selector 7 to insert data of a constant value (displayed in black on the screen) to determine the display position of the image.

The video data output from the selector 7 and the character data information generated by the decoder unit 3 are displayed on the display control unit 8.
Is input to Next, the operation of the display controller 8 will be described. FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an embodiment of the display control unit 8. The image data read from the memory 6 and the character data decoded from the caption data are converted by the RGB converter 80, respectively, and are converted by the D / A converter 81.
Is converted from digital to analog. Next, in superimpose 82, the character data is superimposed on the video data. Finally, it is encoded by the NTSC encoder 83 and output as a video signal with a caption.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing one form of display of subtitled software by the closed caption decoder device of the present invention. Reference numeral 23 is a portion in which the software image and the English subtitle, which is the caption information, are not displayed. In the above-described embodiment, the memory that stores one frame is described as the memory 6, but it may be a field memory.
Also, different memories may be used for R, G, and B, respectively. Further, in the above-described embodiment, the method of thinning out the data is described as the method of reducing the size of the image, but other known methods (for example, the average value of 1, 2, 3 and 4 in FIG. The average value of the thinned data is used as the data before and after the thinned data so that the average value, the average value of 6, 7, and 8 ... Is read. Further, the display positions of the video and subtitles in the above embodiment are not limited to those shown in FIG. 5, and may be displayed at any position. Further, in this embodiment, 23 in FIG. 5 is black, but other colors, brightness or patterns may be used. In the above embodiment, the display size is set by the selection key, but the display size may be fixed and stored in the ROM or the like. Also, the caption information is extracted, and the display size is set according to the number of lines of characters when the character information is generated and whether the caption information is superimposed on 21 lines during the vertical blanking period. Let For example, if there is no caption information,
Automate settings such as displaying video without reducing it.

[0014]

As is apparent from the above description, according to the closed caption decoder device of the invention described in claim 1 of the present application, when the closed caption is displayed by the subtitled software, the image is reduced and displayed. Since English captions, which are caption information, are displayed in the margins, the video can be viewed without being covered by the captions, and the learning effect can be improved when this is used as a learning material.

According to the invention described in claim 2, in addition to the effect of the invention described in claim 1, by selecting and setting the size of the image to be reduced and displayed, it is possible to more flexibly meet the user's request. Can handle.

According to the invention of claim 3, in addition to the effect of the invention of claim 2, the size is automatically set according to the amount of character information of the caption data. To improve convenience.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of a closed caption decoder device according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of a display control unit 8 of FIG.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing a memory for storing video data of the present invention.

4 is a flowchart showing an example of an operation of the display size setting unit 4 in FIG.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing one form of screen display with captions by the closed caption decoder device of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of image display of generalized subtitled software.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a screen display with captions in a conventional closed caption decoder device.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... Caption data extracting unit, 2 ... Microcomputer, 3 ... Decoder unit, 4 ... Display size setting unit, 5
... memory read control unit, 6 ... memory, 7 ... selector,
8 ... Display control section, 9 ... Selection key, 20 ... Video of the software, 21 ... Japanese subtitles, 22 ... English subtitles that are caption information, 23 ... Portion where software subtitles and English subtitles that are caption information are not displayed, 80 ... RGB converter, 81 ... D / A converter, 82 ... Superimpose,
83 ... NTSC encoder, S1 to S7 ... Operation steps of display size setting unit

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A closed system in which a binarized signal of a caption superimposed on a vertical blanking period of a video signal is extracted and decoded, and the decoded character information is displayed on a screen together with a video by the video signal. In a caption decoder device, a memory for storing the video signal, a processing means for controlling the reading of the video signal from the memory so as to divide the screen according to the video signal and the character information, and outputting character data, and the screen. A closed caption decoder device further comprising display control means for displaying the output of the processing means as a video signal and character information. 2. A display size setting means for setting a display size of the video signal, wherein the memory read control is
2. The closed caption decoder device according to claim 1, wherein the video signal of the memory is read out in a size set by the display size setting means. 3. The closed caption decoder device according to claim 2, wherein the display size setting means sets the size according to the amount of the character information to be displayed on the same screen. .