Patent ID: 8023563

Claim:
A process, comprising: converting digital video signals organized in blocks of pixels between a first format and a second format, said second format being a format compressed via vector quantization, the converting being performed by at least one processing device and including: obtaining said vector quantization from repeated application of a scalar quantizer to the pixels of said blocks with a quantization step determined in an adaptive way according to characteristics of the pixels, said quantization step being determined so as to increase according to a lack of uniformity of the pixels in the block; representing said vector quantization in a n-dimensional space indicative of characteristics on n of said pixels in the block partitioned into cells of size proportional to said quantization step, each cell being assigned to an appropriate binary code; and identifying at least one symmetry element in said n-dimensional space suitable for separating at least two symmetrical sets of cells, and selecting one of said at least two symmetrical sets of cells for the assignment of said binary codes, wherein said video signals in said first format are signals generated according to a so-called Bayer pattern, which can be ordered in blocks of size 4×2 having the following pattern of chromatic components: row 1=G 1 R 1 G 2 R 2 , row 2=B 1 G 3 B 2 G 4 ; and wherein said vector quantization is a two-dimensional vector quantization applied to pairs <R 1 , R 2 >, <B 1 , B 2 > together with <G 1 , G 2 >, <G 3 , G 4 > or <G 1 , G 3 >, <G 2 , G 4 >.