Patent ID: 9547916
Date: 2017-01-17
CPC Classifications: G06T,H04N

Claim:
1. An encoding apparatus for encoding uncompressed video data to form compressed video data which is decodable to form at least an approximation of the uncompressed video data, wherein the video data comprises a plurality of image frames comprising key frames and nonkey frames, wherein a nonkey frame is a frame that is encoded with reference to segmentation of other frames (reference frames), and wherein a segmentation of a reference frame is an assignment of some or all of the pixels of the reference frame to segments based on at least one of pixel color values of the pixels and location of the pixels in the reference frame, the apparatus comprising: a) a segmenter that generates a segmentation of a reference frame; b) a motion matcher that matches a segment of the reference frame to an area of a current frame being encoded when the current frame is a nonkey frame; c) a metadata associator that creates a metadata element associated with the segment of the reference frame and further associated with the matched area of the current frame, wherein the metadata element is inherited, such that when a segment associated with the matched area in the current frame is broken up into a group of segments in a subsequent frame, the segments in the group all inherit the metadata element; and d) compressed video data outputter that outputs compressed video data including at least compressed key frames, the kinetic information and the metadata element.