Patent ID: 7869500

Claim:
A digital video encoder, comprising: a video input processor configured to receive a video signal, the video signal including a plurality of frames; and a digital signal processor configured to determine whether a current macroblock from a plurality of macroblocks within a current frame of the plurality of frames contains noise, each macroblock including one or more luminance blocks and one or more chrominance blocks, the digital signal processor being further configured to: (a) calculate a variance for each of the one or more luminance blocks within the current macroblock to provide a plurality of variances, (b) determine a minimum variance from among the plurality of variances, (c) calculate a Log2 of the minimum variance to provide a current Log2 calculation, (d) combine the current Log2 calculation and one or more previous Log2 calculations to provide a running sum, the one or more previous Log2 calculations corresponding to one or more previous macroblocks from the plurality of macroblocks in the current frame, (e) compare the running sum to a noise threshold to determine whether the current frame contains noise, and (f) encode the current macroblock and one or more remaining macroblocks from the plurality of macroblocks as noise when the current frame contains noise.