Picture processing apparatus and picture processing method
Patent No. US7046302 (titled "Picture processing apparatus and picture processing method") on Aug 3, 2001. The application was issued on May 16, 2006.
What is this patent about?
’302 is related to the field of video signal processing and display management, specifically for television receivers capable of simultaneous multi-picture or reduced-picture layouts. In modern broadcasting, video signals often arrive in formats that do not match the display's aspect ratio, leading to the inclusion of black bars—known as letterboxing for vertical padding or side-paneling for horizontal padding—which consume valuable screen real estate and shrink the actual content.
The underlying idea behind ’302 is to dynamically identify and strip away non-picture padding from a video signal before it is scaled and composited into a multi-window display. By isolating only the effective picture area, the system ensures that when multiple sources are shown side-by-side, the actual content is maximized in size rather than being unnecessarily shrunk by the black borders inherent in the source signal's original format.
The claims of ’302 focus on a picture processing apparatus that utilizes a multi-modal determining section to identify the presence of peripheral non-picture portions. This section is specifically claimed to include an ID detecting portion for format identification, an additional information detector for superimposed metadata, and a non-signal detecting portion that analyzes the signal level against a threshold to physically locate the boundaries of the active video content.
In practice, the invention functions by routing selected video sources through a processor that compares the detected content boundaries against the total signal frame. If a letterbox or side-panel format is detected, the system extracts only the active pixels and writes them to a picture memory. This allows the scaling engine to interpolate or thin out only the relevant visual data, ensuring that the resulting image occupies the full allocated window on the screen without wasteful black borders.
This approach differs from prior solutions that treated the entire incoming signal frame as the display object, which resulted in tiny, poorly utilized windows when viewing formatted content. By integrating signal-level analysis with metadata detection, the invention provides a robust way to distinguish between intentional black content and structural padding, thereby optimizing screen utilization efficiency for complex layouts like picture-in-picture or text-heavy on-screen displays.
How does this patent fit in bigger picture?
Technical Landscape
In the early 2000s when ’302 was filed, television receivers were transitioning between standard and wide aspect ratios, at a time when multiple-picture display was typically implemented using fixed-ratio thinning or interpolation of the entire incoming signal. When systems commonly relied on uniform memory writing and reading for all incoming video frames rather than selective extraction of active content, hardware constraints made the dynamic identification of effective picture areas non-trivial. During this era, processing architectures generally treated the entire signal—including non-picture portions like side panels or letterbox bars—as a single monolithic data block, which often led to inefficient screen utilization and the unintended reduction of visible content when multiple sources were displayed simultaneously.
Prosecution Position
The disclosed invention addresses the technical problem of inefficient screen utilization and the reduction of visible picture size when displaying multiple video sources that contain non-picture regions, such as letterbox or side panel formats. The architectural shift involves integrating a determination means to identify these non-picture portions and a processing means that selectively extracts only the effective picture area for size adjustment and combination. This structural solution enables the capability to maximize the display area of the active video content while preventing the processing of wasteful non-picture data. The resulting technical effect is a more efficient use of the display screen and memory resources, ensuring that the visible portion of a video signal remains as large as possible during multi-picture or reduced-picture display modes.
Claims
The patent contains a total of 2 claims, with claim 1 serving as the sole independent claim. This independent claim focuses on a picture processing apparatus designed to select, identify, and combine multiple video signals by detecting non-picture peripheral areas through format identification, additional information detection, and signal level comparison to extract and resize effective picture areas for display. The dependent claim serves to further specify the operational methods of the picture processor, particularly regarding the timing of signal interpolation used to adjust image sizes and combine the various video sources on the screen.
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US7046302
- Application Number
- US09920765A
- Filing Date
- Aug 3, 2001
- Publication Date
- May 16, 2006
- External Links
- Slate, USPTO , Google Patents