ENCODING AND DECODING SELECTIVELY RETRIEVABLE REPRESENTATIONS OF VIDEO CONTENT

摘要

A system and method disposed to enable encoding, decoding and manipulation of digital video with substantially less processing load than would otherwise be required. In particular, one disclosed method is directed to generating a compressed video data structure that is selectively decodable to a plurality of resolutions including the full resolution of the uncompressed stream. The desired number of data components and the content of the data components that make up the compressed video data, which determine the available video resolutions, are variable based upon the processing carried out and the resources available to decode and process the data components. During decoding, efficiency is substantially improved because only the data components necessary to generate a desired resolution are decoded. In variations, both temporal and spatial decoding are utilized to reduce frame rates, and hence, further reduce processor load. The system and method are particularly useful for real-time video editing applications.

主权项

1. A method for previewing video edits comprising:
storing, in a storage structure, for each of a plurality of frames of video, a corresponding plurality of image components representative of the frame of video, the frame of video comprising a corresponding image at an original resolution, the plurality of image components including a base image component associated with a lowest resolution and one or more additional image components associated with resolutions greater than or equal to the lowest resolution and less than or equal to the original resolution, the base image component comprising the corresponding image at the lowest resolution; receiving, from a user, an edit to a frame of video; selecting a preview resolution at which to display the frame of video; accessing a subset of stored image components corresponding to the frame of video, the subset of stored image components including the base image component corresponding to the frame of video and selected based on the selected preview resolution; decoding the accessed subset of stored image components to generate a decoded frame of video comprising the image corresponding to the frame of video at the preview resolution; applying the received edit to the decoded frame of video to produce an edited frame of video at the preview resolution; and displaying the edited frame of video to the user.