Andrea L Basso

6751623, Jun 15, 2004

Jan 26, 1999

09/236548

Andrea Basso - Ocean NJ
Alexandros Eleftheriadis - New York NY
Hari Kalva - New York NY
Atul Puri - Riverdale NY
Robert Lewis Schmidt - Howell NJ

ATT Corp. - New York NY
The Trustees of Columbia University - New York NY

G06F 1700

707101, 7071041, 717107, 717108, 382166, 382171, 382233, 37524024, 348 1412, 348 1413

A fundamental limitation in the exchange of audiovisual information today is that its representation is extremely low level. It is composed of coded video or audio samples (often as blocks) arranged in a commercial format. In contrast, the new generation multimedia requires flexible formats to allow a quick adaptation to requirements in terms of access, bandwidth scalability, streaming as well as general data reorganization. The Flexible-Integrated Intermedia Format (Flexible-IIF or F-IIF) is an advanced extension to the Integrated Intermedia Format (IIF). The Flexible-Integrated Intermedia Format (Flexible-IIF) datastructures, file formats systems and methods provide a framework that integrates advanced concepts, such as objects based audio-visual representation, meta-data and object oriented programming, to achieve a flexible and generic representation of the audiovisual information and the associated methods to operate on the audiovisual information.

6862569, Mar 1, 2005

Jan 23, 2003

10/350225

Andrea Basso - Ocean NJ, US
Mark Charles Beutnagel - Mendham NJ, US
Joern Ostermann - Morganville NJ, US

AT&T Corp. - New York NY

G10L013/00
G06T013/00

704260, 345473, 345706

According to MPEG-4's TTS architecture, facial animation can be driven by two streams simultaneously—text, and Facial Animation Parameters. In this architecture, text input is sent to a Text-To-Speech converter at a decoder that drives the mouth shapes of the face. Facial Animation Parameters are sent from an encoder to the face over the communication channel. The present invention includes codes (known as bookmarks) in the text string transmitted to the Text-to-Speech converter, which bookmarks are placed between words as well as inside them. According to the present invention, the bookmarks carry-an encoder time stamp. Due to the nature of text-to-speech conversion, the encoder time stamp does not relate to real-world time, and should be interpreted as a counter. In addition, the Facial Animation Parameter stream carries the same encoder time stamp found in the bookmark of the text. The system of the present invention reads the bookmark and provides the encoder time stamp as well as a real-time time stamp to the facial animation system.

6961383, Nov 1, 2005

Nov 21, 2001

09/683122

Amy Ruth Reibman - Chatham NJ, US
Leon Bottou - Highlands NJ, US
Andrea Basso - Ocean NJ, US

AT&T Corp. - New York NY

H04N007/12

37524025, 37524002, 37524026

Scalable video coders have traditionally avoided using enhancement layer information to predict the base layer, so as to avoid so-called “drift”. As a result, they are less efficient than a one-layer coder. The present invention is directed to a scalable video coder that allows drift, by predicting the base layer from the enhancement layer information. Through careful management of the amount of drift introduced, the overall compression efficiency can be improved while only slighly degrading resilience for lower bit-rates.

6980697, Dec 27, 2005

Jan 25, 2002

10/057063

Andrea Basso - Ocean NJ, US
Eric Cosatto - Highlands NJ, US
David Crawford Gibbon - Lincroft NJ, US
Hans Peter Graf - Lincroft NJ, US
Shan Liu - Los Angeles CA, US

AT&T Corp. - New York NY

G06K009/40

382274, 382103, 382190, 382291, 348 1401

A method of improving the lighting conditions of a real scene or video sequence. Digitally generated light is added to a scene for video conferencing over telecommunication networks. A virtual illumination equation takes into account light attenuation, lambertian and specular reflection. An image of an object is captured, a virtual light source illuminates the object within the image. In addition, the object can be the head of the user. The position of the head of the user is dynamically tracked so that an three-dimensional model is generated which is representative of the head of the user. Synthetic light is applied to a position on the model to form an illuminated model.

7110950, Sep 19, 2006

Jan 7, 2005

11/030781

Andrea Basso - Ocean NJ, US
Mark Charles Beutnagel - Mendham NJ, US
Joern Ostermann - Morganville NJ, US

AT&T Corp. - New York NY

G10L 13/00
G06T 13/00

704260, 345473, 715706

According to MPEG-4's TTS architecture, facial animation can be driven by two streams simultaneously—text, and Facial Animation Parameters. In this architecture, text input is sent to a Text-To-Speech converter at a decoder that drives the mouth shapes of the face. Facial Animation Parameters are sent from an encoder to the face over the communication channel. The present invention includes codes (known as bookmarks) in the text string transmitted to the Text-to-Speech converter, which bookmarks are placed between words as well as inside them. According to the present invention, the bookmarks carry an encoder time stamp. Due to the nature of text-to-speech conversion, the encoder time stamp does not relate to real-world time, and should be interpreted as a counter. In addition, the Facial Animation Parameter stream carries the same encoder time stamp found in the bookmark of the text. The system of the present invention reads the bookmark and provides the encoder time stamp as well as a real-time time stamp to the facial animation system.

7231099, Jun 12, 2007

Aug 31, 2005

11/216997

Andrea Basso - Ocean NJ, US
Eric Cosatto - Highlands NJ, US
David Crawford Gibbon - Lincroft NJ, US
Hans Peter Graf - Lincroft NJ, US
Shan Liu - Los Angeles CA, US

AT&T - New York NY

G06K 9/40
H04N 7/14

382274, 382103, 382190, 382291, 348 1401

A method of improving the lighting conditions of a real scene or video sequence. Digitally generated light is added to a scene for video conferencing over telecommunication networks. A virtual illumination equation takes into account light attenuation, lambertian and specular reflection. An image of an object is captured, a virtual light source illuminates the object within the image. In addition, the object can be the head of the user. The position of the head of the user is dynamically tracked so that an three-dimensional model is generated which is representative of the head of the user. Synthetic light is applied to a position on the model to form an illuminated model.

7366670, Apr 29, 2008

Aug 11, 2006

11/464018

Andrea Basso - Ocean NJ, US
Mark Charles Beutnagel - Mendham NJ, US
Joern Ostermann - Morganville NJ, US

AT&T Corp. - New York NY

G10L 13/00
G06T 13/00

704260, 704276, 345473

Facial animation in MPEG-4 can be driven by a text stream and a Facial Animation Parameters (FAP) stream. Text input is sent to a TTS converter that drives the mouth shapes of the face. FAPs are sent from an encoder to the face over the communication channel. Disclosed are codes bookmarks in the text string transmitted to the TTS converter. Bookmarks are placed between and inside words and carry an encoder time stamp. The encoder time stamp does not relate to real-world time. The FAP stream carries the same encoder time stamp found in the bookmark of the text. The system reads the bookmark and provides the encoder time stamp as well as a real-time time stamp to the facial animation system. The facial animation system associates the correct facial animation parameter with the real-time time stamp using the encoder time stamp of the bookmark as a reference.

7428547, Sep 23, 2008

Feb 24, 2004

10/785905

Andrea Basso - North Long Branch NJ, US
Alexandros Eleftheriadis - New York NY, US
Hari Kalva - New York NY, US
Atul Puri - Cupertino CA, US
Robert Lewis Schmidt - Howell NJ, US

AT&T Corp. - New York NY
The Trustees of Columbia University - New York NY

G06F 7/00

707101, 707 2, 707100, 707102

File formats systems and methods are disclosed that provide a framework that integrates concepts, such as objects based audio-visual representation, meta-data and object oriented programming, to achieve a flexible and generic representation of the audiovisual information and the associated methods to operate on the audiovisual information. A system and method are disclosed for storing data processed from presentation data. The data is stored according to a method comprising coding input presentation data by identifying objects from within the presentation data, coding each object individually and organizing the coded data into access layer data units. The access layer data units are stored throughout a plurality of segments, each segment comprising a segment table in a header portion thereof and those access layer data units that are members of the respective segment, there being one entry in the segment table for each access layer data unit therein. A plurality of extended segments are also stored, each of the extended segments further comprising one or more of the access layer data units that include protocol specific data, the extended segments each represented by a extended segment header. The data of an accessible object is also stored, including an accessible object header and identifiers of the plurality of extended segments, each of the extended segments being a member of the same object.