Patent ID: 7742521

Claim:
A process, comprising: converting digital video signals having images organized in blocks of pixels between a first format and a second format, said second format being a format compressed via vector quantization, said converting 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, wherein said obtaining said vector quantization includes: identifying a sharpness value of edges in each of said blocks of pixels, and quantizing said sharpness value to divide the edges into a number of classes; and attributing a value to said quantization step differentiated according to the classes, wherein the value of the quantization step is increased near the edges of said images having said pixels, 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 >.