Patent ID: 11876987
Assignee: DOLBY LABORATORIES LICENSING CORPORATION
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 12:
13. A video encoder for encoding a video stream captured by an image sensor that includes a plurality of pixels each belonging to one of N subframes, where the pixels of each subframe are distributed substantially uniformly over an area of the image sensor, each subframe characterized by (1) a same exposure-time sequence that includes a short exposure-time alternating with a long exposure-time, and (ii) a respective temporal offset equal to an integer multiple of the short exposure-time, the video encoder comprising:
a memory storing non-transitory computer-readable instructions and adapted to store image data captured by the image sensor;
a microprocessor communicatively coupled to the memory and adapted to execute the instructions to:
for each of the N subframes, combine a long-exposure low-resolution image, captured at the long exposure-time, and a short-exposure low-resolution image, captured at the short exposure-time, to yield a subframe residual image,
combine at least some of the long-exposure low-resolution images from the N subframes to yield a full-frame long-exposure image having a higher resolution than any long-exposure low-resolution image, wherein said at least some of the long-exposure low-resolution images comprise all pixels of the image sensor;
encode the full-frame long-exposure image into a base layer of the video stream, and encode at least some of the subframe residual images from the N subframes into an enhancement layer of the video stream.