Patent Grant
8046235
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the processing of audio data, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method of encoding audio data and an apparatus and method of decoding encoded audio data, in which the bitrate of encoded audio data may be adjusted, and even when the audio data included in a bitstream to be decoded is encoded audio data of some of the layers of the encoded audio data, the audio data of all of the layers may be recovered.
2. Description of the Related Art
Bit sliced arithmetic coding (BSAC), which has been proposed by the applicant of the present invention, is a coding technique providing FGS (Fine Grain Scalability). In addition, BSAC is an audio compressing technique adopted as a standard by a moving picture experts group (MPEG)-4. BSAC is detailed in Korean Patent Publication No. 261253. Unlike BSAC, the advanced audio coding (MC) technique does not provide FGS.
When an encoder that uses the AAC encodes audio data, it can encode only audio data in some of the frequency bands of the audio data and transmit the encoded audio data to a decoder.
In this case, a spectral band replication (SBR) technique may be considered to recover the audio data in all frequency bands from the audio data in only certain encoded frequency bands that have been encoded using the ACC. In other words, the encoder that uses the AAC generates and encodes SBR data having information about audio data in frequency bands other than the certain encoded frequency bands and transmits the SBR data to the decoder together with the encoded audio data in the certain encoded frequency bands. The decoder can recover the original audio data by inferring the audio data in the frequency bands other than the certain encoded frequency bands. As such, the AAC and SBR techniques can be combined together.
Meanwhile, when an encoder that uses the BSAC encodes audio data, in contrast with the encoder that uses the AAC, the encoder that uses the BSAC can generate a base layer and at least one enhancement layer by dividing the audio data according to frequency bands, encode all of the layers of the audio data, and transmit only the audio data of selected encoded layers that include the base layer to a decoder. Here, since the selected layers are variable, the bit rate of the audio data encoded using the BSAC may be adjusted.
In contrast with the easy combination of the ACC and SBR techniques, combining the BSAC and SBR techniques incurs certain difficulties. That is, some of the encoded audio data layers to be transmitted to the decoder may vary on a case by case basis, and thus, different SBR data should be generated for all possible cases.
There is a demand for a scheme that is able to recover encoded audio data having layers using SBR data that is identical, regardless of the selected layers of the audio data to be transmitted to a decoder.
An audio data encoding apparatus generates a bitstream comprising encoded spectral band replication (SBR) data and encoded audio data whose bitrate may be adjusted because the audio data is divided into a plurality of layers.
An audio data decoding apparatus decodes the audio data included in a to-be-decoded bitstream to recover audio data in the same frequency band as the frequency band of the audio data included in the bitstream and decodes the SBR data included in the bitstream, which is identical regardless of a content of the layers of the audio data included in the bitstream, to recover audio data in a frequency band of frequencies greater than the maximum frequency of the audio data included in the bitstream.
An audio data encoding method generates a bitstream comprising encoded spectral band replication (SBR) data and encoded audio data whose bitrate may be adjusted because the audio data is divided into a plurality of layers.
An audio data decoding method decodes the audio data included in a to-be-decoded bitstream to recover audio data in the same frequency band as the frequency band of the audio data included in the bitstream and decodes the SBR data included in the bitstream, which is identical regardless of a content of the layers of the audio data included in the bitstream, to recover audio data in a frequency band of frequencies greater than the maximum frequency of the audio data included in the bitstream.
A computer-readable recording medium may store a computer program to generate a bitstream comprising encoded spectral band replication (SBR) data and encoded audio data whose bitrate may be adjusted because the audio data is divided into a plurality of layers.
A computer-readable recording medium may store a computer program to decode the audio data included in a to-be-decoded bitstream to recover audio data in a same frequency band as the frequency band of the audio data included in the bitstream and decode the SBR data included in the bitstream, which is identical regardless of a content of the layers of the audio data included in the bitstream, to recover audio data in a frequency band of frequencies greater than the maximum frequency of the audio data included in the bitstream.
According to an aspect of the present invention, an audio data encoding apparatus comprises: a scalable encoding unit dividing audio data into a plurality of layers, representing the audio data in predetermined numbers of bits in each of the plurality of layers, and encoding the lower layer prior to encoding the upper layer and the upper bit of each layer prior to encoding the lower bit thereof; an SBR encoding unit generating SBR (spectral band replication) data that has information about audio data in a frequency band of frequencies equal to or greater than a predetermined frequency among the audio data to be encoded, and encoding the SBR data; and a bitstream production unit generating a bitstream using the encoded SBR data and the encoded audio data corresponding to a predetermined bitrate.
According to another aspect of the present invention, an audio data decoding apparatus comprises: a bitstream analysis unit extracting encoded SBR data and encoded audio data corresponding to at least one layer, the layer being expressed in predetermined numbers of bits, from a given bitstream; a scalable decoding unit decoding the encoded audio data by decoding a lower layer prior to decoding an upper layer and the upper bit of each layer prior to decoding the lower bit of each layer; a SBR decoding unit decoding the encoded SBR data, and inferring audio data in a frequency band between a first frequency and a second frequency based on the decoded audio data and the decoded SBR data; and a data synthesis unit generating synthetic data by using the decoded audio data and the inferred audio data and outputting the synthetic data as the audio data in the frequency band between 0 and the second frequency, wherein the second frequency is equal to or greater than a maximum frequency of the at least one layer, and the SBR data comprises information about the audio data in the frequency band between the first and the second frequencies.
According to an aspect of the present invention, an audio data encoding method comprises: (a) dividing audio data into a plurality of layers, representing the layers of the audio data in predetermined numbers of bits, and encoding the lower layers prior to encoding the upper layers and the upper bits of each layer prior to encoding the lower bits thereof; (b) generating SBR (spectral band replication) data that has information about audio data in a frequency band of frequencies equal to or greater than a predetermined frequency among the audio data to be encoded, and encoding the SBR data; and (c) generating a bitstream using the encoded SBR data and the encoded audio data corresponding to a predetermined bitrate.
According to another aspect of the present invention, an audio decoding method comprises: (a) extracting encoded SBR data and encoded audio data corresponding to at least one layer, the layer being expressed in predetermined numbers of bits, from a given bitstream; (b) decoding the encoded audio data by decoding a lower layer prior to decoding an upper layer and the upper bit of each layer prior to decoding the lower bit of each layer; (c) decoding the encoded SBR data, and inferring audio data in a frequency band between a first frequency and a second frequency based on the decoded audio data and the decoded SBR data; and (d) generating synthetic data by using the decoded audio data and the inferred audio data and determining the synthetic data to be the audio data in the frequency band between 0 and the second frequency, wherein the second frequency is equal to or greater than the maximum frequency of the at least one layer, and the SBR data comprises information with respect to the audio data in the frequency band between the first and the second frequencies.
According to an aspect of the present invention, a computer-readable recording medium may store a computer program that executes a method comprising: (a) dividing audio data into a plurality of layers, representing the layers of the audio data in predetermined numbers of bits, and encoding the lower layers prior to encoding the upper layers and the upper bits of each layer prior to encoding the lower bits thereof; (b) generating SBR (spectral band replication) data that has information with respect to audio data in a frequency band of frequencies equal to or greater than a predetermined frequency among the audio data to be encoded, and encoding the SBR data; and (c) generating a bitstream using the encoded SBR data and the encoded audio data corresponding to a predetermined bitrate.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a computer-readable recording medium may store a computer program that executes a method comprising: (a) extracting encoded SBR data and encoded audio data corresponding to at least one layer, the layer being expressed in predetermined numbers of bits, from a given bitstream; (b) decoding the encoded audio data by decoding a lower layer prior to decoding an upper layer and the upper bit of each layer prior to decoding the lower bit of each layer; (c) decoding the encoded SBR data, and inferring audio data in a frequency band between a first frequency and a second frequency based on the decoded audio data and the decoded SBR data; and (d) generating synthetic data by using the decoded audio data and the inferred audio data and determining the synthetic data to be the audio data in the frequency band between 0 and the second frequency, wherein the second frequency is equal to or greater than the maximum frequency of the at least one layer, and the SBR data comprises information with respect to the audio data in the frequency band between the first and the second frequencies.
Additional aspects and/or advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and, in part, will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
These and/or other aspects and advantages of the invention will become apparent and more readily appreciated from the following description of the embodiments, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings of which:
Reference will now be made in detail to the embodiments of the present invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings, wherein like reference numerals refer to the like elements throughout. The embodiments are described below to explain the present invention by referring to the figures.
The scalable encoding unit 110 encodes audio data received via an input port IN1 by dividing the received audio data into a plurality of layers, representing the layers in predetermined numbers of bits, and encoding the lower layers prior to encoding the upper layers. When a layer is encoded, the upper bits of the layer are encoded prior to encoding the lower bits of the layer.
More specifically, the scalable encoding unit 110 converts the audio data in the time domain into audio data in the frequency domain. For example, the scalable encoding unit 110 may perform the conversion using a modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) method.
Then, the scalable encoding unit 110 divides the frequency-domain audio data into the plurality of layers. The layers include a base layer and at least one enhancement layer. The layers are divided according to a frequency band.
The scalable encoding unit 110 quantizes the divided audio data. In the embodiment of
The scalable encoding unit 110 represents the quantized divided audio data in a predetermined number of bits. Different numbers of bits may be allocated according to the type of a layer.
The scalable encoding unit 110 hierarchically encodes the quantized audio data. For example, the scalable encoding unit 110 may encode the quantized audio data using bit sliced arithmetic coding (BSAC).
Audio data transmitted to an audio-data decoding apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention may be the entire audio data, namely, audio data of all of the layers, or partial audio data, namely, audio data of some of the layers. Here, the certain layers transmitted to the audio data decoding apparatus denote at least one layer, including the base layer 210-0. As such, when certain of the layers of the audio data are transmitted to the audio-data decoding apparatus, the audio data corresponding to the certain layers is desirably encoded prior to encoding the audio data corresponding to the other residual layers.
To achieve this, the scalable encoding unit 110 encodes the quantized audio data so that the lower layers are encoded prior to encoding the upper layers and the upper bits of each layer are encoded prior to encoding the lower bits thereof. Hence, the scalable encoding unit 110 encodes the audio data of the lowest layer 210-0 at the very first and encodes the audio data of the highest layer 210-N−1 at the very last. Furthermore, when the scalable encoding unit 110 encodes the audio data of each layer, it encodes at least one most significant bit (MSB) among the audio data at the very first encoding of the layer and at least one least significant bit (LSB) at the very last of encoding of the layer. This encoding sequence is derived from the fact that significant information included in audio data is generally more distributed in lower layers than in upper layers, and furthermore, more in the upper bits of each layer than in the lower bits thereof.
In this way, the scalable encoding unit 110 encodes all of the layers of the audio data.
The SBR encoding unit 120 generates SBR data and encodes the same. The SBR data according to the present invention, denotes data including information about audio data in a frequency band between a first frequency and a second frequency. The first frequency may be a frequency equal to or greater than the maximum frequency f1 of the base layer 210-0. The first frequency is generally the maximum frequency f1 of the base layer 210-0. The second frequency may be generally, a frequency equal to or greater than the maximum frequency fk of the highest layer among the some layers that are transmitted to the audio-data decoding apparatus, more generally, the maximum frequency fN of the encoded audio data of all layers.
The information with respect to the audio data may denote information with respect to noise of the audio data or information with respect to the envelope 205 of the audio data.
More specifically, the SBR encoding unit 120 may generate SBR data using the information with respect to the envelope 205 of the audio data in the frequency band between the first and second frequencies and perform lossless encoding on the generated SBR data. Herein, the lossless encoding is entropy encoding or Huffman encoding.
The bitstream production unit 130 generates a bitstream using the Huffman-encoded SBR data and audio data corresponds to a predetermined bitrate among the encoded audio data of all of the layers, and outputs the bitstream via an output port OUT1.
The predetermined bitrate denotes the bitrate of the audio data of the certain layers to be transmitted to the audio-data decoding apparatus among the audio data included in all the encoded layers. In other words, the predetermined bitrate is equal to or greater than the bitrate of the base layer 210-0.
The time/frequency mapping unit 510 converts audio data in the time domain received via an input port IN2 into audio data in the frequency domain. The input port IN2 may be the same as the input port IN1. Frequency of the audio data in the time domain is a predetermined sampling frequency Fs. In addition, the audio data in the time domain is a discrete audio data.
The psychoacoustic unit 520 groups the audio data output by the time/frequency mapping unit 510 according to a frequency band to generate a plurality of layers.
The quantization unit 530 quantizes audio data of each of the layers and encodes the quantized audio data of all of the layers so that the lower layers are encoded prior to encoding the upper layers and the upper bits of each layer are encoded prior to encoding the lower bits thereof. The quantization unit 530 outputs the result of the encoding to the bitstream production unit 130 via an output port OUT2.
The down sampling unit 540 is optional. The down sampling unit 540 samples the audio data in the time domain at a sampling frequency that is less than the predetermined sampling frequency Fs, that is, at Fs/2, and outputs the result of the sampling to the time/frequency mapping unit 510 and the psychoacoustic unit 520.
The multi-channel extended data EXT_BSAC_CHANNEL 650 denotes audio data of third through M-th (where M denotes an integer equal to or greater than 3) channels. When the audio data given to the audio-data encoding apparatus of
The audio data being encoded by the audio-data encoding apparatus may further include starting codes 630 and 640, indicating the start of the combinable data 620, in addition to the audio data 610 and the combinable data 620. The starting code 630 and 640 may be one of a first starting code, a second starting code, and a third starting code.
The first starting code indicates the start of the SBR data EXT_BSAC_SBR_DATA 660. More specifically, the first starting code may include a zero code zero_code 630 represented in 32 bits of 0 and an extension code extension_type 640 represented in ‘1111 0000’. As shown in
The second starting code indicates the start of the error detection data and the SBR data EXT_BSAC_SBR_DATA_CRE 670. More specifically, the second starting code may include the zero code zero_code 630, which is represented in 32 bits of 0, and an extension code extension_type 640 represented in ‘1111 0001’. As shown in
The third starting code indicates the start of the audio data of the third through M-th channels. More specifically, the third starting code may include the zero code zero_code 630, which is represented in 32 bits of 0, and an extension code extension_type 640 represented in ‘1111 1111’. The multi-channel extended data encoding unit may include a third starting code encoding unit (optionally part of 108) for encoding the third starting code.
The bitstream analysis unit 810 extracts ‘encoded SBR data’ and ‘encoded audio data having at least one layer, each of the layers being expressed in a predetermined number of bits’ from a bitstream received via an input port IN3. The bitstream may be the bitstream output via the output port OUT1. In other words, the bitstream analysis unit 810 extracts ‘the SBR data generated by the SBR encoding unit 120’ and ‘the audio data corresponding to at least one layer among the entire audio data of all of the layers that are generated by the scalable encoding unit 110’ from the bitstream received via the input port IN3.
The scalable decoding unit 820 decodes the extracted audio data by decoding the audio data of lower layers prior to decoding the audio data of upper layers and the upper bits of each layer prior to decoding the lower bits thereof. The decoding of the extracted audio data by the scalable decoding unit 820 may be performed at or below the predetermined bitrate. For example, when the audio data included in the bitstream generated by the bitstream production unit 130 among the audio data encoded by the scalable encoding unit 110 are the audio data of the base layer 210-0 and the first and second enhancement layers 210-1 and 210-2, the scalable decoding unit 820 may decode all of the audio data of the base layer 210-0 and the first and second enhancement layers 210-1 and 210-2, or only the audio data of the base layer 210-0 and the first enhancement layer 210-1, or only the audio data of the base layer 210-0. The predetermined bitrate may be equal to or greater than the bitrate of the base layer 210-0.
In the case that encoded audio data is included in the received bitstream for each of the first through M-th channels, as shown in
The SBR decoding unit 830 decodes the extracted SBR data. The SBR decoding unit 830 infers the audio data in the frequency band between the first and second frequencies based on the audio data received from the scalable decoding unit 820 and the decoded SBR data.
As shown in
The data synthesis unit 840 generates synthetic data from the audio data received from the scalable decoding unit 820 and the audio data inferred by the SBR decoding unit 830. The data synthesis unit 840 also converts the synthetic data, which is data in the frequency domain, into synthetic data in the time domain and outputs the synthetic data in the time domain as the audio data in the frequency band ranging from 0 to the second frequency via an output port OUT3. In other words, when the maximum frequency of the entire audio data encoded by the audio data encoding apparatus is the second frequency, although the audio data included in the bitstream is only the audio data of some of the layers, the data synthesis unit 840 recovers the audio data of all of the layers.
For ease in explanation, it is illustrated in
As shown in
The audio data 930 inferred by the SBR decoding unit 830 exists in a frequency band from f1 to f10 kHz. The synthetic data 940 generated by the data synthesis unit 840 exists in a frequency band from 0 to f10 kHz. In other words, the synthetic data 940 is the result of decoding of the audio data 910. The audio data 940 and 910 may be different to some degree, but are desired to be identical with each other.
The data synthesis unit 840 outputs the decoded audio data 920 as synthetic data for the frequency band (i.e., from 0 to f3 kHz) where the decoded audio data 920 exists.
The data synthesis unit 840 outputs the inferred audio data 930 as synthetic data for the frequency band (i.e., from f3 to f10 kHz) where the decoded audio data 920 does not exist.
As a result, the data synthesis unit 840 determines the decoded audio data 920 to be synthetic data for the frequency band (i.e., from f1 to f3 kHz) where both the decoded audio data 920 and the inferred audio data 930 exist.
The inverse-quantization unit 1010 receives ‘the exacted audio data’ via an input port IN4, decodes the received audio data, and inversely quantizes the decoded audio data. The frequency/time mapping unit 1020 converts the inversely quantized audio data in the frequency domain into audio data in the time domain and outputs the audio data in the time domain via an output port OUT4.
The lossless decoding unit 1110 receives ‘the extracted SBR data’ via an input port IN5 and performs lossless decoding on the received SBR data. Herein, the lossless decoding is entropy decoding or Huffman decoding. Hence, the lossless decoding unit 1110 obtains information with respect to the audio data in the frequency band between the first and second frequencies from the extracted SBR data. For example, the lossless decoding unit 1110 obtains information with respect to the envelope of the audio data in the frequency band between the first and second frequencies.
The high frequency generation unit 1120 causes the decoded audio data 920 to be generated in frequency bands (in
The analysis QMF bank 1130 converts ‘the decoded audio data’ received via an input port IN6 into audio data in the frequency domain and outputs the audio data in the frequency domain via an output port OUT6.
The envelope adjustment unit 1140 adjusts the envelope of the audio data generated by the high frequency generation unit 1120, using the information obtained by the lossless decoding unit 1110. That is, the envelope adjustment unit 1140 adjusts the audio data generated by the high frequency generation unit 1120 so that the envelope of the audio data is identical to that of the audio data encoded by the scalable encoding unit 110. The adjusted audio data is output via an output port OUT5. The audio data input to the scalable encoding unit 110, which exists in the frequency band between the first and second frequencies, is inferred and is referred to as the adjusted audio data.
The overlapping unit 1210 receives ‘the audio data 920 decoded by the scalable decoding unit 820’ via an input port IN7 and ‘the audio data 930 inferred by the SBR decoding unit 830’ via an input port IN8 and generates synthetic data using the decoded audio data 920 and the inferred audio data 930.
More specifically, the overlapping unit 1210 outputs the decoded audio data 920 as the synthetic data for the frequency band (i.e., from 0 to f3 kHz in
The decoded audio data 920 received via the input port IN7 and the inferred audio data 930 received via the input port IN8 are both audio data in the frequency domain. Accordingly, if the decoded audio data is audio data in the time domain, it is desirably input to the input port IN7 via the analysis QMF bank 1130.
The synthesis QMF bank 1220 converts the synthetic data in the frequency domain into synthetic data in the time domain and outputs the synthetic data in the time domain via an output port OUT7.
In operation 1310, the scalable encoding unit 110 divides the received audio data into a plurality of layers, represents the layers of the audio data in predetermined numbers of bits, and encodes the lower layers prior to encoding the upper layers and the upper bits of each layer prior to encoding the lower bits thereof.
In operation 1320, the SBR encoding unit 120 generates SBR data having the information with respect to the audio data in the frequency band ranging from the first frequency to the second frequency and performs Huffman coding on the SBR data.
The operation 1320 may be performed after the operation 1310 as shown in
After operations 1310 and 1320, in operation 1330, the bitstream production unit 130 generates a bitstream using the audio data encoded in operation 1310 and the SBR data encoded in operation 1320.
In operation 1410, the bitstream analysis unit 810 extracts the audio data encoded in operation 1310 and the SBR data encoded in operation 1320 from the bitstream to be decoded.
In operation 1420, the scalable decoding unit 820 decodes the audio data encoded in operation 1310 by decoding lower layers prior to decoding upper layers and the upper bits of each layer prior to decoding the lower bits thereof.
In operation 1430, the SBR decoding unit 830 decodes the SBR data encoded in operation 1320, and infers the audio data in the frequency band between the first and second frequencies, based on the audio data decoded in operation 1420 and the decoded SBR data.
In operation 1440, the data synthesis unit 840 generates synthetic data from the audio data decoded in operation 1420 and the audio data inferred in operation 1430 and determines the synthetic data as the audio data in the frequency band between 0 and the second frequency.
In operation 1510, the lossless decoding unit 1110 performs lossless decoding on the encoded SBR data included in the to-be-decoded bitstream in order to obtain information with respect to the envelope of the audio data in the frequency band from the first frequency to the second frequency.
In operation 1520, the high frequency generation unit 1120 causes the audio data decoded in operation 1420 to be generated in the frequency bands equal to or greater than the maximum frequency of the decoded audio data.
In operation 1530, the envelope adjustment unit 1140 adjusts the envelope of the audio data generated in operation 1520 using the information obtained in operation 1510. The operation 1530 is followed by operation 1440.
As described above, in an apparatus and method of encoding audio data and an apparatus and method of decoding encoded audio data according to the present invention, the audio data included in a to-be-decoded bitstream is decoded to recover the audio data in the same frequency band as the frequency band of the audio data included in the bitstream, and the SBR data included in the bitstream is decoded to recover audio data in a frequency band of frequencies equal to or greater than the maximum frequency of the audio data included in the bitstream. Hence, even when the audio data included in the bitstream is the encoded audio data of certain of the layers, the audio data of all the layers is recovered. Furthermore, the SBR data included in the bitstream is fixed, regardless of a content of the layers of the audio data included in the bitstream, so that the BSAC and SBR techniques may be easily combined together.
Embodiments of the invention may also be embodied as computer readable codes on a computer readable recording medium. The computer readable recording medium is any data storage device that stores data which may be thereafter read by a computer system. Examples of the computer readable recording medium include read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM), CD-ROMs, magnetic tapes, floppy disks, optical data storage devices, and carrier waves (such as data transmission through the Internet). The computer readable recording medium may also be distributed over network coupled computer systems so that the computer readable code is stored and executed in a distributed fashion.
Although a few embodiments of the present invention have been shown and described, it would be appreciated by those skilled in the art that changes may be made in these embodiments without departing from the principles and spirit of the invention, the scope of which is defined in the claims and their equivalents.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10-2005-0135837 | Dec 2005 | KR | national |
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Nos. 60/671,111, 60/706,441, and 60/707,546 filed on Apr. 14, 2005, Aug. 9, 2005, and Aug. 12, 2005 in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and Korean Patent Application No. 10-2005-0135837, filed on Dec. 30, 2005, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein in their entireties by reference. This application is a divisional application of U.S. Ser. No. 11/403,827 filed Apr. 14, 2006, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,813,932 now allowed and incorporated by reference herein.
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