JPH10322697A - Image information encoder, image information decoder and image processing system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an image encoder and an image decoder which output a high resolution image that has many effective pixel numbers and also reduce data quantity to be accumulated about a part of image information in image information that has many effective pixel numbers. SOLUTION: Image information of an XGA standard is inputted from an inputting part 5 and performed down sampling to an NTSC standard in a down sampler 10. A switch 12 is switched through an instruction signal from a controller 18, image information from the switch 12 is encoded by a compression encoder 14 and recorded on a recording medium K by a recording part 16. On the other hand, on a decoding side, information of the medium K which is read by a reading part 20 is decoded by a compression decoder 22, and image information of a frame that is not performed down sampling is separated by a separating part 24 and sent to a high resolution output processing part 28.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a video processing apparatus, and more particularly, to a video processing apparatus for converting video information of Motion JPEG standard into NTSC standard.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, various graphics display standards have been known. For example, XGA, VGA, SV
Standards such as GA exist.

[0003]

However, an encoding process is performed on video information having a large number of effective pixels (that is, high resolution) and composed of a plurality of frames.
For decoding, a predetermined frame is output with video information having a small number of effective pixels, while other frames are required to be output as video information having a large number of effective pixels, which requires a large-capacity recording medium. However, when transmission is performed via a transmission path, there is a problem that communication time is required. Here, the video information having a large number of effective pixels includes XGA, and the video information having a small number of effective pixels includes NTSC.

[0004] That is, when the above processing is to be performed, the following processing may be performed. That is, first, video information having a large number of effective pixels is encoded and stored in a recording medium, and at the time of decoding, the video information having a large number of effective pixels is converted into video information having a small number of effective pixels and output to a display unit. . Then, all the video information having a large number of effective pixels is accumulated in the recording medium, so that a large-capacity recording medium is required. But here,
At the time of decoding, a predetermined frame is converted into video information having a small number of effective pixels, so that all of the stored video information having the number of effective pixels is not used. On the other hand, if the video information is converted into video information having a small number of effective pixels before being stored on the recording medium, a high-resolution video cannot be obtained upon decoding.

In view of the above, according to the present invention, with respect to video information having a large number of effective pixels, a high-resolution video having a large number of effective pixels can be output for a part of the video information, and the amount of data to be stored can be reduced. It is an object to provide an image encoding device, an image decoding device, and the like.

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in order to solve the above-mentioned problems. First, in an image information encoding apparatus for performing an image information encoding process, there is provided an effective information processing apparatus. For the image information of the number of pixels, a conversion unit that converts and outputs image information having a smaller number of effective pixels than the number of effective pixels, image information of the certain number of effective pixels, and image information output from the conversion unit. And an encoder for encoding the image information output from the switch unit. In the first configuration, the conversion unit converts image information having a certain number of effective pixels into image information having a smaller number of effective pixels. For example, if VGA image information is NT
It is converted to SC image information. Then, the switch unit is switched as needed between the image information of the certain effective number of pixels and the image information converted by the conversion unit, and is sent to the encoder.
The encoder performs an encoding process on the image information sent from the switch unit. Therefore, according to the switching in the switch section, the conversion of the predetermined image information into a small number of effective pixels is not performed, so that a high-resolution image can be obtained at the time of decoding. Also, by converting predetermined image information into a small number of effective pixels,
The amount of data can be reduced, the capacity of the recording medium can be reduced,
Further, the transmission time can be shortened.

Second, in the first configuration, the encoder writes information on the number of effective pixels of image information of each frame to be encoded in a header of each frame. . Therefore, by analyzing the information written in the header at the time of decoding, the number of effective pixels of certain image information can be known. Third, the first
Alternatively, in the second configuration, the switching of the switch unit is performed according to an instruction signal input from the outside. Therefore, a high-resolution image of a desired image can be obtained by performing an external instruction signal switching instruction by a user operation or the like. Fourth, in any of the above-described first to third configurations,
The image information having a small number of effective pixels is NTSC image information.

Fifth, in an image information decoding apparatus for decoding encoded image information, a decoding process of decoding image information having image information having different effective pixel numbers from encoded image information is performed. It is characterized by having a decoder and a separating unit for extracting image information having a large number of effective pixels in the decoded video information. In the fifth configuration, a decoder performs decoding of video information having image information with different numbers of effective pixels. Then, the separating unit separates image information having a large number of effective pixels. Therefore, by outputting the separated image information, a high-resolution output image can be obtained.

Sixthly, in the above-mentioned fifth configuration, the separating section determines that the image information has a large number of effective pixels, based on information written in a header of each frame. I do. Seventh, in the fifth or sixth configuration, the image information decoding apparatus further comprises:
The image information having a large number of effective pixels has a conversion unit for converting the image information having a small number of effective pixels into image information having a small number of effective pixels, and the separation unit transmits the video information from the decoder to the conversion unit as it is. I do. In the image information decoding device having the seventh configuration, the separation unit transmits the video information from the decoder to the conversion unit as it is. Then, the conversion unit converts image information having a large number of effective pixels into image information having a small number of effective pixels. Therefore, by performing the output process on the image information having the small number of effective pixels, it is possible to obtain the output image regarding the image information having the small number of effective pixels. Eighthly, in any one of the fifth to seventh configurations, the image information having a small number of effective pixels is NTSC image information.

Ninthly, in an image processing system for performing predetermined processing on image information, the image information encoding device according to the first or second or third or fourth and the fifth or sixth or seventh or 8. The image information decoding device according to item 8, wherein

[0011]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. As shown in FIG. 1, the image processing system P according to the present invention includes an encoding device A as the image information encoding device and a decoding device B as the image information decoding device.

Here, the encoding device A includes a downsampler 10, a switch 12, a compression encoder 14,
A recording unit 16. Here, the encoding device A is:
The input unit 5 and the control device 18 are connected. The input unit 5 transmits the video information to the downsampler 10 of the encoding device A.
Is to be entered. It is assumed that the input video information is video information in which a plurality of pieces of image information for each frame are continuous. In addition, the down sampler 10 as the conversion unit
Is to reduce the number of effective pixels of the image information input to the downsampler 10 to the number of effective pixels of NTSC.

Here, an example of the configuration of the downsampler 10 will be described as shown in FIG. That is, as shown in FIG. 4, the downsampler 10 includes a vertical filter unit 30, a horizontal filter unit 40, and a conversion unit 50.
And Here, the vertical filter unit 30 includes:
Line memories 301 to 304 and multiplication units 311 to 315
And an adder 321.

The line memories 301 to 304 perform a delay corresponding to one horizontal period of a scanning line of an input video signal, and each of the line memories 301 to 304 stores data of one horizontal line. It has a storage capacity. The multipliers 311 to 315 are multipliers for multiplying each scanning line by a filter coefficient for weighting. That is, the luminance and color difference values of each pixel in one line of video data are multiplied by the filter coefficient. For example, as shown in FIG. 4, the multiplication unit 311 multiplies the filter coefficient α1. Further, the addition unit 321 includes the multiplication units 311 and 31
2, 313, 314, and 315 are connected to the respective output sides and add the respective outputs of the multipliers 311, 312, 313, 314, and 315.

The horizontal filter section 40 includes a shift register 401, multiplication sections 411 to 415, and an addition section 421.
And The shift register 401 holds a horizontal video signal one pixel at a time, and the multipliers 411 to 415 are multipliers that multiply each pixel by a filter coefficient. That is, the luminance and color difference values of each pixel are multiplied by the filter coefficient. In addition, the addition unit 421
Multiplier 41 connected to each output side of multipliers 411 to 415
1 to 415 are added.

The conversion section 501 converts a scanning line. More specifically, the conversion section 501 takes in the video signal of each pixel output from the horizontal filter section 40 and converts the output video signal in the vertical and horizontal directions. A predetermined video signal is thinned out and output so as to match the number of scanning lines. That is, writing to the frame memory 501 is controlled by a memory write enable signal as a comb-like pulse signal.

Next, the switch 12 as the switch section is for switching between the output terminal of the downsampler 10 and the output terminal of the input section 5, and has input terminals 12a and 12b and an output terminal 12c. And
The input terminal 12a is connected to the output terminal of the downsampler 10, and the input terminal 12b is connected to the output terminal of the input unit 5. Input terminal 12a of this switch 12
Switching between the input terminal 12b and the input terminal 12b is performed by an instruction signal from a control device 18 provided outside. Further, the compression encoder 14 as the encoder includes:
It compresses and encodes the amount of image information. Further, the recording unit 16 stores the encoded image information in a recording medium K
It is recorded in.

The decoding device B includes a reading unit 20
It has a compression decoder 22, a separation unit 24, an NTSC output processing unit 26, and a high-resolution video output processing unit 28. Here, the reading unit 20 reads the video information recorded on the recording medium K. Further, the compression decoder 22 as the decoder expands encoded video information. Further, the separation section 24 is made of NT
This is to separate high-resolution image information that has not been reduced to the number of effective pixels of the SC. That is, image information that has not passed through the downsampler 10 is separated by the separation unit 24. The NTSC output processing unit 26
Is to reduce the high-resolution image information that has not been reduced to the number of effective pixels of NTSC to the number of effective pixels of NTSC, to add a synchronization signal to output video information in accordance with the NTSC standard, and to perform NTSC encoding. Perform processing. This NTSC output processing section 26 functions as the conversion section of the sixth aspect. The high-resolution output processing unit 28
Performs output processing for outputting high-resolution image information.

The operation of the image processing system P having the above configuration will be described. First, the operation of the encoding device A will be described. Video information is output from the input unit 5 and the encoding device A
Is input to Here, it is assumed that the input video information is, for example, the XGA display standard. It is assumed that this video information is video information in which a plurality of pieces of image information for each frame are continuous. This video information is input to the downsampler 10, where the number of effective pixels is reduced to the number of effective pixels of NTSC.
Is input to the input terminal 12a. That is, a scanning line conversion process is performed. Here, the XGA video signal corresponds to a video signal having a large number of effective pixels, while the NTSC video signal corresponds to a video signal having a small number of effective pixels.

Specifically, the vertical filter unit 3 shown in FIG.
At 0, vertical filtering is applied, and
The horizontal filter unit 40 performs filtering in the horizontal direction. Then, in the conversion unit 50, predetermined scanning lines are thinned out and written into the frame memory 501.
The video signal written in the frame memory 501 is output at a predetermined timing. As described above, since the video information is processed by the low-pass filter, aliasing noise generated at the time of down-sampling can be reduced, and better image quality can be obtained. The video information from the input unit 5 is also input to the input terminal 12b of the switch 12 as it is.

Here, the switch 12 is switched by an instruction signal from a control device 18 provided outside. That is, the instruction signal is switched between a signal for switching to the input terminal 12a and a signal for switching to the input terminal 12b. For example, for a certain frame in video information input from a certain input unit 5, the input terminal 1
2a, and a certain frame is switched to the input terminal 12b. The switching in the instruction signal may be performed, for example, by giving an instruction while the user visually recognizes the video information output from the input unit 5 on a monitor (not shown). Then, the image information from the downsampler 10 and the image information from the input unit 5 are selectively input to the compression encoder 14 according to the switching by the switch 12. The switching of the switch 12 is performed in units of vertical synchronization of video information input from the input unit 5.

Then, in the compression encoder 14,
Motion JPEG processing is performed on the video information to compress the information. Here, Motion
In JPEG, as shown in FIG. 2, there is a portion (Y, X) where the size (image size) of the image is written in the header H of each frame. Written. That is, in the case of the XGA standard, information of each pixel number of 768 and 1024 is written, and in the case of the NTSC standard, for example, 483
And 720 (when the sampling frequency is 13.5 MHz). The information on the number of pixels may be given from the control device 18, or the information on the number of pixels may be held in the compression encoder 14, and the control device 18 may instruct the switch 12 to switch to which side. May be written in the header.

That is, in the JPEG video data as shown in FIG. 3, when the n-th frame to the (n + m) -th frame are not down-sampled video, the header H of these frames has the HGA case. Information on the number of pixels is written. If the (n−2) -th frame, the (n−1) -th frame, and the (n + m + 1) -th frame are down-sampled videos, information on the number of pixels in the case of NTSC is written in the header H of these frames. . The video information encoded by the compression encoder 14 is sent to the recording unit 16 and written on the recording medium K.

Next, the operation of the decoding device B will be described. The reading unit 20 reads the recording medium K on which the video information encoded by the encoding device A is recorded. Then, the read video information is sent to the compression decoder 22. In the compression decoder 22,
Decompression processing is performed. The compression decoder 22 sends the expanded video information to the separation unit 24. Here, the compression decoder 22 adds, in addition to the expanded video information to be displayed,
The information on the number of effective pixels written in each header is also stored in the separation unit 24.
Send to

Then, the separating section 24 extracts the image information of the frame that has not been downsampled. That is, in the header of each frame, the image information is extracted from the frame in which the information of the number of effective pixels of XGA is written. That is, high-resolution video information is separated.
The extracted image information is sent to the high-resolution output processing unit 28. The high-resolution output processing unit 28 is provided with a memory (not shown), in which the extracted video information is stored, and processing such as output to the outside based on an instruction from the outside is performed.

Further, the separating section 24 sends the video information in the input state of the separating section 24 to the NTSC output processing section 26.
That is, in the encoding device A, not only the downsampled video information but also the downsampled image information is sent to the NTSC output processing unit 26. N above
The TSC output processing unit 26 performs a process for outputting in the NTSC standard. That is, for video information for which downsampling has not been performed, the number of effective pixels is set to NTS.
Processing for reducing the number of effective pixels to C or less is performed. That is, the same processing as that of the down sampler 10 is performed.
Whether the image information has not been downsampled is determined according to the information on the number of effective pixels written in the header. Also, the NTSC output processing unit 26
The encoder performs processing such as encoder processing and addition of a synchronization signal.
Output as TSC video information.

As described above, according to the image processing system P of the present embodiment, the image information to be output at a high resolution is passed to the decoding side without performing a downsampler. Output can be performed. On the other hand, for image information for which high-resolution output is not performed, down-sampling processing is performed in advance on the encoding side, so that the amount of data to be stored on the recording medium can be reduced.

In the above description, it has been described that the encoded video information is stored in the recording medium K. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and the video information is transmitted to the decoding side by using a transmission / reception device. Is also good. Even in this case, the amount of data to be transmitted can be reduced, so that the transmission time can be shortened.

In the above description, XGA display standard video information has been described as an example of high resolution video information. However, the present invention is not limited to this. Should be fine. Therefore, for example, SVGA and the like can be mentioned. Also, down sampler 1
In the description of 0, the number of effective pixels is reduced to the number of effective pixels of the NTSC. However, the present invention is not limited to this. What is necessary is just to reduce.

In the above description, Motion JPEG has been described as an example of encoding.
Encoding such as MPEG1 and MPEG2 may be used. Further, in the above description, the downsampler 10 has a configuration including the vertical filter section and the horizontal filter section. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and a configuration in which scanning lines are simply thinned out may be employed.

In the above description, the information on the number of effective pixels is described as being written in the header of each frame. However, the present invention is not limited to this.
A discrimination information adding unit is provided after the compression encoder 14, and a discrimination information generating unit is provided between the discrimination information adding unit and the control device 18 so that the discrimination information is added to the video information encoded by the compression encoder 14. Is also good. This discrimination information is information indicating the image size for each frame, that is, information indicating which video information is downsampled and which video information is not downsampled. This information is generated by the discrimination information generation unit based on an instruction signal from the control information. In this case, the decoding device B is also provided with a discrimination information extraction unit for extracting the discrimination information before the compression decoder 22, and the extracted discrimination information is sent to the separation unit 24, and according to this discrimination information. Separation of high resolution video information is performed.

[0032]

According to the image information encoding apparatus and the image information decoding apparatus according to the present invention, in the video information having a large number of effective pixels, a part of the video information is a high-resolution image having a large number of effective pixels. Can be output, and the amount of data to be stored can be reduced.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of an image processing system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing a configuration of a header of a certain frame.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing a configuration of encoded JPEG video data.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a downsampler.

[Explanation of symbols]

 P Image processing system A Encoding device B Decoding device 10 Downsampler 12 Switch 14 Compression encoder 16 Recording unit 18 Control device 20 Reading unit 22 Compression decoder 24 Separation unit 26 NTSC output processing unit 28 High resolution output processing unit

Claims (9)

[Claims] 1. An image information encoding apparatus for encoding image information, comprising: a conversion unit for converting image information having a certain number of effective pixels into image information having a smaller number of effective pixels than the number of effective pixels and outputting the image information; A switch unit for switching and outputting image information of a certain number of effective pixels and image information output from the conversion unit; and an encoder for encoding the image information output from the switch unit. , An image information encoding device comprising: 2. The image information encoding apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the encoder writes information on the number of effective pixels of the image information of each frame to be encoded into a header of each frame. 3. The image information encoding apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the switching of the switch section is performed in accordance with an instruction signal input from the outside. 4. The image information having a small number of effective pixels is N
The image information encoding apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the image information is TSC image information. 5. An image information decoding device for decoding coded image information, comprising: a decoder for decoding video information having image information with different effective pixels from coded video information; For image information having a large number of effective pixels in the processed video information, a separation unit that extracts the image information,
An image information decoding device comprising: 6. The image information decoding apparatus according to claim 4, wherein said separation unit determines that the image information has a large number of effective pixels based on information written in a header of each frame. 7. The image information decoding apparatus further comprises a conversion section for converting image information having a large number of effective pixels into image information having a small number of effective pixels, wherein the separation section includes a video signal from a decoder. The image information decoding apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the information is transmitted to the conversion unit as it is. 8. The image information having a small number of effective pixels includes N
8. The image information decoding apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the image information is TSC image information. 9. An image processing system for performing predetermined processing on image information, wherein the image information encoding device according to claim 1, 2, 3 or 4, and the image information according to claim 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 An image processing system, comprising: an information decoding device.