This application claims the benefit of the filing date of Taiwan Application Ser. No. 093106280, filed on Mar. 10, 2004, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a digital versatile disc (DVD) playback device, and particularly to a DVD playback device capable of recognizing characters in sub-pictures by converting sub-pictures into character codes.
2. Related Art
In general, digital versatile data stored on a DVD includes versatile data, such as video, audio and subtitle, and information for playing control. When a DVD playback device playbacks a DVD, it uses a video decoder, an audio decoder and a sub-picture decoder to decode the video data, audio data and subtitle, respectively.
Generally, the subtitle picture is recorded in the DVD in a bitmap format.
However, there is a disadvantage existed in the current DVD playback device. The playback device only displays the subtitle pictures corresponding to the sub-picture units but not provide further information associated with characters in the subtitle pictures.
In view of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a DVD playback device capable of recognizing characters in the sub-picture units.
To achieve the above object, the DVD playback device capable of recognizing characters in the sub-picture units according to the present invention comprises a control module for generating playing control signals and a character recognition control signal in response to an operation command, a navigator for retrieving versatile data, generating an output signal in response to the play control signals and generating a setting signal in response to navigation data in the sub-picture unit set as desired to be read, a demultiplexer for outputting audio data, video data and sub-picture units in response to the output signal from the navigator, an audio decoder for receiving the audio data and generating a decoded audio signal, a video decoder for receiving the video data and generating a decoded video signal, a sub-picture decoder for receiving and analyzing the sub-picture units and generating subtitle pictures and an enable signal, and a character recognition unit for recognizing characters in the subtitle pictures in response to the setting signal, character recognition control signal and the subtitle pictures.
As thus constructed, the DVD playback device capable of recognizing characters according to the present invention may output character codes of characters in the subtitle pictures and may further provide an interactive operation accordingly.
The invention will become more fully understood from the detailed description given hereinbelow illustration only, and thus are not limitative of the present invention, and wherein:
The DVD playback device capable of recognizing characters according to the present invention will be described in more detail with reference to the drawings.
For a general DVD playback device, a user selects some desired functions and set some parameters to playback the DVD only according to his needs or control information provided by the playing digital versatile data in the DVD. However, the present invention provides an additional function of character recognition in a DVD playback device so that the DVD playback device may provide further information in the subtitle pictures by analyzing the subtitle pictures using the character recognition function.
As above mentioned, the sub-picture decoder 433 generates each subtitle picture displaying unit and displaying information corresponding thereto, including time, position, color contrast information and the like. Therefore, an enable signal is generated simultaneously when the subtitle picture displaying unit is sent or displayed from the sub-picture decoder 433. In response to the subtitle picture displaying unit, the character recognition unit 51 may recognize the characters in the subtitle picture displaying unit.
However, recognition of characters is influenced by different languages, words and fonts corresponding to the characters. In light of this, the character recognition unit 51, as compared to the prior recognition technology, will load in different word libraries and character libraries after receiving the setting signal from the navigator 41, in which the setting signal comprises navigation data such as language and dimension of the characters. Further, the adopted recognition mechanism is different from the prior one, e.g. only 26 letters are required to be recognized when the to-be-recognized characters are English but they need to be combined into words. However, Chinese characters are required to be recognized each word. Alternatively, the character recognition unit 51 may further process the recognized characters in response to the character recognition control signal.
Generally, a character recognition operation may be divided into an image pre-processing step and an actual character recognition step. The image pre-processing step is performed to make the picture easy to be recognized and extract each character out of the characters in the image by analyzing them and the character recognition step is performed to recognize each of the characters and enhance correctness of the character recognition with an aid of the associated words stored in the word library. The character recognition operation is ordinary to a skilled person of the art and the description associated therewith will be omitted herein.
The character recognition unit 51 enters a character recognition mode only after a character recognition control signal is enabled. In the character recognition mode, the character recognition unit 51 first set a language corresponding to the to-be-recognized characters according to the setting signal from the navigator 41, such as Chinese, English, Japanese and the like. Also, a language library as required is loaded in, such as information corresponding to the language set. In addition, a corresponding algorithm used for character recognition may also be loaded in. As mentioned above, the character recognition unit 51 will detect the enable signal and recognize the characters in the subtitle picture outputted from the sub-picture decoder 433 when the enable signal is enabled. Then, the character recognition unit 51 outputs recognized character codes, such as ASCII codes when English is the language corresponding to the characters. In actual operation, the character recognition unit 51 may be incorporated or integrally formed in the sub-picture decoder 433.
Referring to
After receiving the subtitle pictures, the enable signal and the setting signal, the character recognition unit 51 recognizes the characters in the subtitle pictures and outputs the character codes corresponding thereto. The outputted character codes have different formats and definitions depending upon the language and the character recognition control signal. For examples, if the corresponding language is English, the character codes used are ASCII codes. If the corresponding language is traditional Chinese, the character codes used are BIG5 codes. The “enable signal” is thus named since when it is received, the character recognition unit 51 is triggered to recognize the characters in the subtitle pictures. The “setting signal” is thus named since the language corresponding to the characters to be recognized by the character recognition unit 51 is set by this signal, which is issued by the playing unit 52 according to navigation data corresponding to the to-be played subtitle pictures. With the language information from the setting signal, the character recognition unit 51 may use the corresponding library and algorithm in its character recognition task.
While the preferred embodiments of the present invention have been set forth for the purpose of disclosure, modifications of the disclosed embodiments of the present invention as well as other embodiments thereof may occur to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, the appended claims are intended to cover all embodiments which do not depart from the spirit and scope of the present invention.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
093106280 | Mar 2004 | TW | national |