DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1, 2, 5 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Egilmez et al. (US20240040120A1), hereinafter referred to as Egilmez, in view of De Rivaz et al. (De Rivaz, Peter, and Jack Haughton. "Av1 bitstream & decoding process specification." The Alliance for Open Media 681 (2019): 1-681.), hereinafter referred to as De Rivaz.
Regarding claim 1, Egilmez discloses a method comprising:
obtaining reconstructed block data for a current block of a current frame of a current sequence of frames, wherein obtaining the reconstructed block data includes (See ¶¶ 0122]-[0124] disclosing the decoder path that receives coded video data for coding blocks, dequantizes and inverse-transforms the coded coefficient data, reconstructs coding-block data, and forms reconstructed frame data from the reconstructed blocks).
obtaining transform type statistics for previously reconstructed reference frames from the current sequence of frames (See ¶¶ [0111]- [0114] disclosing calculating historical transform-candidate statistics from previously coded information and using those statistics for transform-set selection)
determining, in accordance with the transform type statistics, a current subset of transform types from a set of available transform types (See ¶ [0113] disclosing that if transform set Si is selected more than threshold T in a previously coded frame, “both the encoder and the decoder may switch to using transform set Si for the next frame.).
generating the reconstructed block data by decoding encoded block data obtained from an encoded bitstream using a current transform type from the current subset of transform types (See ¶¶ [0122]- [0123] describing that the decoder receives coded video data, dequantizes and inverse-transforms coefficient data, and reconstructs the coding block; ¶ [0119] disclosing the selection or signaling of the transform mode used by the transform unit; and [0113] suppling the transform set selected for the frame); and
outputting the reconstructed block data (See ¶ [0123] disclosing that the adder 1426 “may output reconstructed coding block data”).
Egilmez does not explicitly disclose the previously reconstructed reference frames including at least one previously reconstructed reference frame.
However, De Rivaz from the same or similar endeavor of image processing discloses the previously reconstructed reference frames including at least one previously reconstructed reference frame (See p. 5 defining a reference frame as storage for a previously decoded frame and associated information; p. 152 teaching that primary_ref_frame identifies the reference frame containing the cumulative distribution function (CDF) values and other state that is loaded at the start of the frame; and p. 159 disclosing that load_previous( ) is a function call that indicates that information from a previous frame may be loaded for use in decoding the current frame, wherein prevFrame is set equal to ref_frame_idx[ primary_ref_frame ])
It would have been obvious to the person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement Egilmez 's historical transform-statistics mechanism using the established De Rivaz reference-frame state mechanism so that the historical state used for current frame transform set selection is retained with and recovered from a previously decoded reference frame (De Rivaz, pp. 152 and 159).
Regarding claim 2, Egilmez and De Rivaz disclose all the limitations of claim 1 and is analyzed as previously discussed with respect to that claim.
Egilmez does not explicitly disclose the method of claim 1, wherein the previously reconstructed reference frames have high quality relative to the current frame.
However, De Rivaz from the same or similar endeavor of image processing discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the previously reconstructed reference frames have high quality relative to the current frame (See p. 3 defining golden frame as a frame used for inter coding that is typically encoded with higher quality and used as a reference for multiple inter frames).
The motivation for combining Egilmez and De Rivaz has been discussed in connection with claim 1, above.
Regarding claim 5, Egilmez and De Rivaz disclose all the limitations of claim 1 and is analyzed as previously discussed with respect to that claim.
Furthermore, Egilmez discloses the method of claim 1, wherein determining the current subset of transform types includes: determining a subset cardinality for the current subset of transform types indicating how many transform types to include in the current subset of transform types (See ¶ 0089] stating that the number of candidates in each transform set may be a fixed number N and that N can be 4, 5, ... 1).
Regarding claim 16, this claim is rejected based on the same art and evidentiary limitations applied to the method of claim 1, since it claims analogous subject matter for performing the same or equivalent functionality.
The Examiner notes that it is well-known in the art that video compression involves a complementary pair of systems: an encoder and a decoder. The encoder converts the source data into a compressed form, occupying a reduced number of bits prior to transmission or storage, while the decoder converts the compressed form back into a representation of the original video data by performing a reciprocal process to that of the encoder, decoding the encoded video data from the bitstream.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Egilmez, in view of De Rivaz, and further, in view of Gokhale (US20190045217A1), hereinafter referred to as Gokhale.
Regarding claim 3, Egilmez and De Rivaz disclose all the limitations of claim 1 and is analyzed as previously discussed with respect to that claim.
Egilmez does not explicitly disclose the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one previously reconstructed reference frame has a first quantization parameter that is greater than a second quantization parameter for the current frame.
However, Gokhale from the same or similar endeavor of image processing discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one previously reconstructed reference frame has a first quantization parameter that is greater than a second quantization parameter for the current frame (See ¶[0082] disclosing the claimed “previously reconstructed reference frame” by teaching that an LTR stores a decoded reference frame until explicitly removed; and ¶[0304] disclosing that a determination may be made as to whether a scene transition based Qp is less than the current LTR frame Qp in response to the determination at operation 2432 that that the interval since assigning an LTR Frame is not greater or equal to an LTR update interval).
It would have been obvious to the person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the teachings disclosed by Egilmez and De Rivaz to add the teachings of Gokhale as above, in order to account for the relative QPs of a retained reference frame and the current frame when selecting historical reference-frame information for current-frame processing (Gokhale, ¶¶[0216] and [0304]–[0305]).
Claims 4, 6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Egilmez, in view of De Rivaz, and further, in view of Xu (US20230112642A1), hereinafter referred to as Xu.
Regarding claim 4, Egilmez and De Rivaz disclose all the limitations of claim 1 and is analyzed as previously discussed with respect to that claim.
Egilmez does not explicitly disclose the method of claim 1, wherein obtaining the transform type statistics includes: sorting the transform type statistics in descending frequency-of-use order.
However, Xu from the same or similar endeavor of image processing discloses the method of claim 1, wherein obtaining the transform type statistics includes: sorting the transform type statistics in descending frequency-of-use order (See ¶ [0160] disclosing ordering the transform types according to historical frequency so that the more frequently used transform types appear earlier in the candidate subsets).
It would have been obvious to the person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the teachings disclosed by Egilmez and De Rivaz to add the teachings of Xu as above, in order to let low-complexity blocks use fewer candidates and high-complexity blocks use more coefficients may not need many transform options, while blocks with more complex residuals may benefit from, improving efficiency (Xu, ¶¶ [[0022] -[0031] and [0143]- [0154]).
Regarding claim 6, Egilmez, De Rivaz and Xu disclose all the limitations of claim 5 and is analyzed as previously discussed with respect to that claim.
Furthermore, Egilmez discloses the method of claim 5, wherein determining the subset cardinality includes: determining the subset cardinality and at least one quantization parameter for the current frame (See ¶¶ [0089]- [0090], [0113], and [0119]- [0120] disclose transform-type frequency statistics, transform sets having different cardinalities, and a QP for the current coding process).
Egilmez does not explicitly disclose in accordance with at least one of a distribution of transform types from the transform type statistics or quantization parameters for the previously reconstructed reference frames.
However, De Rivaz or Xu from the same or similar endeavor of image processing discloses in accordance with at least one of a distribution of transform types from the transform type statistics or quantization parameters for the previously reconstructed reference frames (See ¶¶ [0159]- [0160] disclosing using transform-type frequency statistics from a previously coded region to determine the transforms included in and ordered within the candidate subsets).
The motivation for combining Egilmez, De Rivaz and Xu has been discussed in connection with claim 4, above.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Egilmez.
Regarding claims 18-20, these claims are directed to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a bitstream generated by the feature encoding method which is a product by process claim limitation where the product is the bitstream and the process is the method steps to generate the bitstream. MPEP §2113 recites “Product-by-Process claims are not limited to the manipulations of the recited steps, only the structure implied by the steps”. Thus, the scope of the claim is the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing the bitstream (with the structure implied by the method steps). The structure includes the information and samples manipulated by the steps.
To be given patentable weight, the printed matter and associated product must be in a functional relationship. A functional relationship can be found where the printed matter performs some function with respect to the product to which it is associated”. MPEP §2111.05(I)(A). When a claimed “computer-readable medium merely serves as a support for information or data, no functional relationship exists. MPEP §2111.05(III). The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing the claimed bitstream in these claims merely serves as a support for the storage of the bitstream and provides no functional relationship between the stored bitstream and storage medium. Therefor the bitstream, which scope is implied by the method steps, is non-functional descriptive material and given no patentable weight. MPEP §2111.05(III). Thus, the claim scope is just a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing data and is anticipated by Egilmez which recites a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a bitstream (See Egilmez, ¶ [0143]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7-15, and 17 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claim.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See PTO-892 for additional references.
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/FABIO S LIMA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2486
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