Patent ID: 9661328
Date: 2017-05-23
CPC Classifications: H04N

Claim:
1. A system for allocating bits for video signal processing and compression, the system comprising: an input module configured to receive an original picture in a video sequence; a noise reducer to modify the original picture in a video signal to improve compression efficiency wherein the noise reducer configured to: receive an original picture from the input module; obtain a perceptual significance pixel map for the original picture using predictions of eye tracking; provide an absolute value for numbers in the significance pixel map; perform companding to reduce the determined absolute value of the pixel values to values ranging from zero to one to produce a weighting map; apply the weighting map to the original picture to reduce noise in the original picture selectively in a pixel-by-pixel basis to produce a noise-reduced picture; output the noise-reduced picture; output the weighting map to a control processor; and a control processor configured to: receive the weighting map from the noise reducer; receive a map of transform-quantization units that specifies size and location of transform-quantization units to be processed by an encoder; calculate the average value of the weighting map within each transform-quantization unit to produce a decimated weighting map; determine a quantization parameter for each transform-quantization unit from a quantization parameter (OP) look up table (LUT) that assigns decimated weighting map values to corresponding quantization parameter values; provide the QP LUT table values as metadata to enable compression of the original picture in a manner so that bits are allocated to pixels in a macroblock according to the predictions of eye tracking; and an encoder having a first input receiving the original video from the input module, and a control input for receiving the quantization metadata and using the quantization metadata to encode the original video.