Patent ID: 7616821
Filing Date: 2009-11-10
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. A method for transitioning compression levels between image frames in a streaming image system, the method comprising: receiving, by a server of an interactive streaming image system, client information from one or more clients of the interactive streaming image system; generating, by a content generator of the server, a new image frame based on the received client information; determining, by the server, an initial compression level; comparing, by a content change detector of the server, the new image frame to a previous image frame to determine whether content changed between the new image frame and the previous image frame; performing, by a smoothing module of the server, a smoothing heuristic by generating a multi-frame smoothing routine based on the initial compression level, a target compression level, and a number of frames to achieve the target compression level; wherein performing the smoothing heuristic comprises increasing image quality in response to no change of content between the new image frame and the previous image frame, and wherein further performing the smoothing heuristic comprises decreasing image quality in response to a change in content between the new image frame and the previous image frame; setting by the smoothing module the new compression level for the image frame based on the generated multi-frame smoothing routine; encoding, by a content encoder of the server, the new image frame based on the new compression level; and transmitting, by the server, the encoded new image frame and the new compression level to the one or more clients of the interactive streaming image system.