Patent ID: 7375760

Claim:
A method for video content-dependent scan rate conversion with adaptive noise reduction, comprising the steps of: for the luminance signal of a source interlaced image: temporal filtering said interlaced image to mitigate the possibility of false motion detection; analyzing the motion patterns of said interlaced image to determine if said interlaced image originated from a 2:2 or 3:2 progressive film mode source or from an inherently interlaced source; based on said analyzing the motion patterns, determine a solution for scan rate conversion on a pixel-by-pixel basis; determining motion intensity values for said interlaced image; detecting edge directions in said interlaced image; using said motion values and edge directions to perform motion-adaptive scan rate conversion on a pixel-by-pixel basis for said interlaced image; in parallel with said motion-adaptive scan rate conversion, using said motion values and edge directions to perform content-dependent video noise reduction of said interlaced image; assembling a new content-dependent progressive scan luminance image depending on the presence of motion in said interlaced image, wherein: adjacent odd and even fields of said interlaced image are combined in the still portions of said interlaced image where motion is not present, said still portions of image being temporally filtered to smooth out Gaussian noise; interpolating along edges of present field of said interlaced image in the portions of said interlaced image where motion is present, said motion portions of interlaced image being spatially filtered using a direction-dependent median filter in the presence of impulse noise or an edge; for the chrominance signal of said source interlaced image: performing spatial filtering using a median filter to remove impulse noise; performing a linear interpolation on said chrominance signal by averaging adjacent lines in the current field of said interlaced image; and performing an up conversion to combine the new luminance and chrominance fields with the current field to provide a progressive image.