JPH0227889A - Video telephone communication system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To attain picture communication in matching with communication with different aspect ratio between the sender side and the receiver side by providing a correction process correcting a picture data to either the transmission process or the reception process. CONSTITUTION:The picture data of both ends in the horizontal direction is deleted in response to the aspect ratio of the receiver side equipment, a fetch picture data M is extracted and the fetch picture data M is subject to picture element interpolation by a prescribed rule to generate a corrected picture data M' having a horizontal standard picture element number. Thus, the longitudinal elongation of the picture data displayed on the picture display section of the receiver side is prevented even at the communication between different types of equipments where the sender side has a larger lateral size and the receiver side has a larger longitudinal size in their aspect ratios and the matching of the display pictures between the sender side and the receiver side is attained.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a videophone communication system, particularly to an improvement in a communication system between different types of videophone communication system that transmits and receives desired still images during a call. .

[Prior Art] There is a demand for videophones that simultaneously transmit audio and images using telephone communication lines, but in reality, current telephone communication lines cannot continuously transmit moving images that require a huge amount of data. However, it is difficult to send and receive images to the other party during a call, and videophones that send still images to the other party during a call are being put into practical use.

This videophone allows you to temporarily interrupt a normal voice call and send a desired still image, such as the speaker's face, a photo screen, or a picture depending on the content of the call. be.

Therefore, with such a videophone, it is possible to send and receive images over a telephone line, which was previously impossible.
Furthermore, since the amount of data to be processed is only one still image each time, the amount of data to be processed is small, which has the advantage of making it easy to put videophones into practical use.

Hereinafter, a conventional videophone will be explained based on the drawings.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of the image processing section of the video phone.

As shown in FIG. 6, the image processing section of the videophone is
An image input section (1) for inputting still image information, an image display section (2) for displaying manually or received still images, and an image memory (2) for storing image data consisting of a plurality of pixel data.
3), an image control section (4) that controls the input and output of image data to each section, and an image control section (4) that sequentially modulates the image data into an audio frequency signal to a telephone line and outputs it to the telephone line. a modulation/demodulation unit (hereinafter referred to as a modem) (5) that sequentially receives and demodulates image data, and a central processing unit (hereinafter referred to as CPU) (6) that controls each part in the device.
It consists of

Next, the operation of the videophone device will be explained.

First, on the still image transmission side, the image control section (4)
The still image information obtained by imaging from the image human resources department (1) is sent to A/D.
The conversion is performed to generate image data consisting of a plurality of pixel data, and this image data is stored in an image memory (3).

Next, upon receiving an image transmission instruction from the CPU (6), the image control section (4) sequentially reads out the image data of the image information stored in the image memory (3) pixel by pixel and sends it to the modem (5). ).

In the modem (5), the image data is modulated into an audio frequency signal and then sent out onto the telephone line.

On the other hand, on the receiving side, the following operations are performed.

The modem (6) transmits the audio frequency signal received from the telephone line.
After demodulating and converting to image data, the image control unit (4
) is stored in the image memory (3).

After receiving the pixel data for one image, the image control unit (4) outputs the pixel data to the image display unit (2),
The image display section (2) performs display.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] In the conventional videophone communication system, for example, the image display section on the transmitting side has a screen with a pixel count of 96 x 96 and an aspect ratio of 3:4, and the display section on the receiving side has a screen aspect ratio of 3:4. When the screen aspect ratio of a screen with 96×96 pixels is 5:4, there is a problem in that a vertically elongated image is displayed on the display section on the receiving side.

The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned problems, and even when transmitting and receiving images of different models with different screen aspect ratios, it is possible to The purpose of the present invention is to obtain a videophone communication system that allows accurate image display.

[Means for Solving the Problems] In order to achieve the above object, in the videophone communication system according to the present invention, when the screen aspect ratios of the transmitting side display device and the receiving side display device are different, the transmitting process or the receiving side display device is An image data correction step is provided on either side of the process to adjust the output image to the receiving display device.

Claim (1) provides that the image data correction step includes a correction screen ratio calculation step of calculating the number of pixels captured in the horizontal direction and a correction screen ratio according to the aspect ratio of both screens of the display device on the transmitting side and the receiving side, and an image memory. a captured image data extraction step of deleting image data at both ends in the horizontal direction of the image data read out according to the horizontal direction captured pixel number and extracting captured image data; The pixel interpolation process performs pixel interpolation accordingly to correct the horizontal standard pixel count and generates image data.

Further, the invention of claim (2) includes a step of calculating the number of pixels to be captured in the horizontal direction and an interpolation region according to the aspect ratio of both screens, and a step of calculating the number of pixels to be captured in the horizontal direction and an interpolation region according to the aspect ratio of both screens, and A captured image data extraction step of deleting the image data at both horizontal ends of the read image data according to the number of horizontal captured pixels and extracting captured image data, and pixels in the interpolation area of the captured image data. This method consists of a pixel interpolation process in which image data is output as is, pixels within the interpolation area are interpolated, and corrected image data for horizontal standard pixels is generated.

[Function] As described above, in the videophone communication system, when the display device on the transmitting side and the display device on the receiving side have different screen aspect ratios, the image data correction step is provided in either the transmitting step or the receiving step. By doing so, the image data at both ends in the horizontal direction is deleted according to the screen aspect ratio of the receiving device, the captured image data is extracted, and the captured image data is subjected to pixel capture according to a predetermined rule, and the horizontal standard pixel count is corrected. By generating image data, the image data can be displayed on the image display section of the receiving side even when communicating between different models, where the sending side's screen aspect ratio is large and the receiving side's screen aspect ratio is large. It is possible to prevent the image from being stretched vertically, and it is possible to improve the consistency of displayed images on the transmitting and receiving sides.

[Embodiments] Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the videophone communication system according to the present invention will be described based on the drawings.

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram of a preferred embodiment according to the invention of claim (1).

In this embodiment, image communication is performed from a videophone device having a display portion with a horizontal standard pixel count of 96×96 and a screen aspect ratio of 3:4 horizontally to a videophone device having a display portion with a screen aspect ratio of 5:4 horizontally. It's a method.

The general configuration of the videophone device according to this embodiment is shown in the sixth section.
Since the device configuration is the same as that of the image processing section of the videophone shown in the figure, the explanation will be made using FIG. 6.

The feature of this embodiment is the operation of the CPU (6),
When transmitting an image from a videophone device having a display section with standard horizontal pixels of 96 x 96 and a screen aspect ratio of 32 x 4 to a videophone device having a display section with a screen aspect ratio of 5:4, the following occurs. perform an action.

First, as in the prior art, still image information input from the image input section (1) is A/D converted to generate image data consisting of a plurality of pixel data and stored in the image memory (3).

Then, at the start of image transmission, a corrected screen ratio N is calculated according to the screen aspect ratios of the image display units on the sending side and on the receiving side.

At this time, the number 81 of pixels to be captured in the horizontal direction of the captured image data M to be actually transmitted is determined according to the aspect ratio of both screens, and from this number of horizontal capture pixels Sl and the standard horizontal pixel number S, (1) A corrected screen ratio N that satisfies the formula is determined (corrected screen ratio calculation step).

5-S1+S1/N... (1) Then, the image data to be transmitted is read line by line from the image memory (3), and as shown in FIG.
The CPU (6) reads only the pixel data from the S2+1st pixel to the 82+S1th pixel.
Read to PU memory (6b).

That is, the image data at both horizontal ends of the image data stored in the image memory (3) (images in the shaded areas in FIG. 1(a)) are deleted, and the captured image data M is stored in the CPU memory (6b). Extracted (Imported image data extraction process)
.

Next, as shown in FIG. 1(b), pixel interpolation is performed on the captured image data M according to the corrected screen ratio N to generate corrected image data M' having a horizontal standard number of pixels S, Send to (5).

First, the captured image data is sent to the modem (5) one pixel at a time.
Send to.

At this time, after outputting N-1 pixels from the captured image data M to the modem (5), the interpolated pixel H is calculated as in equation (2) and output to the modem (5).

H-(XN-1+XN)/2 However, XN-1: N-1st pixel data XN 2N
th pixel data... (2) Therefore, the modem (5) has N captured image data.
Figure 1 (b) interpolated at a rate of 1 pixel per pixel.
Corrected image data M′ as shown in FIG.

The corrected image data M' is then modulated by a modem (5) and sent to the telephone line.

Therefore, when the receiving side receives the corrected image data M', demodulates it, and displays the image, the aspect ratio is consistent with the captured image data M, as shown in FIG. 1(C). Image display on the receiving side can be performed in the same process as the conventional method.

Next, an example of the second M-th requirement will be described.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of the corrected image data of this embodiment,
Detailed operation flowcharts are shown in FIGS. 1B3 to 5.

First, depending on the screen aspect ratio of the sending and receiving sides,
The number of pixels to be captured in the horizontal direction 81, the corrected screen ratio N, and the interpolation area S4 are calculated.

Then, image data is read out line by line and pixel by pixel from the image memory (3).

At this time, as shown in FIG. 2(a), 82 pixels from the first pixel are skipped.

Then, processing A shown in FIG. 4 is performed on S1 pixel data from the S2+1st pixel data.

Next, processing A is performed on one line of data of the captured image data M, and the same processing is performed on all lines.

Process A will be explained below.

As shown in FIG. 4, the 85 pixel data from S2+1 are modulated and transmitted as they are. Then, processing B shown in FIG. 5 is applied to the pixels in the interpolation area (that is, 84 pixels from S2+S5+1st pixel).

Process B will be explained below.

The pixel data of the interpolation area is read from the image memory and output to the modem (5), and the value of the pixel storage work is updated to the value of the read pixel data.

Then, based on the corrected screen ratio N, 1
In order to increase the number of pixels, when outputting pixel data to the modem (5), after outputting N pixels, the pixel data stored in the pixel storage work is outputted.

Therefore, corrected image data having the horizontal standard number of pixels S as shown in FIG. 2(b) is obtained.

Therefore, the image data to be transmitted is N+1 in the horizontal direction.
The image is expanded by /N times, but the display on the receiving side shows the second
The resulting image is as shown in Figure (C), and consistency in the aspect ratios of the images on the transmitting side and on the receiving side can be obtained.

As described above, according to the above embodiment, consistency of images on the transmitting side and the receiving side can be achieved with the device configuration of the conventional videophone device.

In addition, in the above embodiment, an example was shown in which the corrected image data generation process was provided on the transmission process side, but on the receiving side, when outputting from the image memory to the image display section, correction is performed in the same process as in the above embodiment. By generating and outputting image data,
The same effects as in the above embodiment are achieved.

[Effects of the Invention] As explained above, according to the inventions of claims (1) and (2), since the correction process for correcting image data is provided on either the transmission process or the reception process, Even when transmitting and receiving sides have different screen aspect ratios during communication, the screen aspect ratios of the sending and receiving sides can be made the same, allowing consistent image communication.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram of a preferred embodiment of the videophone communication system according to the invention of claim (1), and FIG. 2 is a preferred embodiment of the videophone communication system according to the invention of claim (2). 3 to 5 are detailed operation explanatory diagrams of the embodiment of FIG. 2, and FIG. 6 is a schematic block diagram of the image processing section of the video telephone device. In the figure, N is the corrected screen ratio, S is the standard number of pixels in the horizontal direction, Sl is the number of captured pixels in the horizontal direction, and S4 is the interpolation area value. In addition, in the figures, the same reference numerals indicate the same or corresponding parts.

Claims (2)

[Claims] (1) In a videophone communication system that uses a telephone line to transmit and receive desired still images during a call, when the screen aspect ratios of the transmitting side display device and the receiving side display device are different, either the transmitting process or the receiving process or a corrected screen ratio calculation step of calculating the number of pixels captured in the horizontal direction and the corrected screen ratio according to the aspect ratio of both screens; a captured image data extraction step of deleting and extracting captured image data according to the number of captured pixels in the horizontal direction; and performing pixel interpolation on the captured image data according to the corrected screen ratio to obtain corrected image data with a horizontal standard number of pixels. It is characterized by providing an image data correction step consisting of a pixel interpolation step for generating, and an image data correction step, and preparing output image data to the receiving display device by transmitting the corrected image data or correcting the received image data. A videophone communication system that uses (2) In a videophone communication system that uses a telephone line to transmit and receive desired still images during a call, when the display device on the transmitting side and the display device on the receiving side have different screen aspect ratios, either the transmitting process or the receiving process On the other hand, a capture pixel number/interpolation area calculation step of calculating the horizontal capture pixel count and interpolation area according to the aspect ratio of both screens; and image data at both horizontal ends of the image data read from the image memory. a captured image data extraction step of deleting the captured image data according to the number of captured pixels in the horizontal direction, and outputting the image data as is for pixels outside the interpolation area of the captured image data, and outputting the image data as is for pixels within the interpolation area. performs pixel interpolation to generate corrected image data of horizontal standard pixels, and provides an image data correction process consisting of: By transmitting the corrected image data or correcting the received image data, A videophone communication system characterized by arranging output image data to a receiving display device.