Apple Patents: File Sharing, Video Editing, Image Rendering

On April 8 2008, the US Patent & Trademark Office granted Apple three new patent applications relating to the protection of digital content, the technique of fade transitions in video editing, and the display systems utilizing the rendering of  image portions where the layers overlap.

Method and apparatus for marking content during distribution of the content to a client

The present invention (US Patent 7356511) relates to Apple’s commitment to discourage the illegal copying and distribution of digital content.

While Apple believes that sharing of content benefits society, it is concerned over a growing trend of file sharing being focused on piracy. According to the Apple:

When a theater receives a digital copy of a movie from the film studio, they are also receiving a perfect master from which near-perfect copies of the movie can be made. Many safeguards have been put into place to prevent the illegal copying of protected content. While many of these safeguards work well when they are distributed, they are quickly defeated by other individuals, many of whom view the new safeguards as a challenge that they must break… What is needed, in this case, is a method and apparatus that discourages the illegal copying of content while not preventing the consumer from making legal copies of the content.

Methods and apparatuses for the automated display of visual effects

The present invention (US Patent 7355606) relates to the technique of fade transitions in a video clip (or motion picture), particularly to the generation of visual effects for real time display on a data processing system. Game developers have tried to generate real time video fade effects in which a function is called repeatedly to adjust the display gamma table for gamma correction. Such an approach is unnecessary, because it requires significant efforts, while there is a better solution. According to the Apple:

One embodiment of the present invention provides an automated mechanism for displaying visual effects… through adjusting color correction parameters… without disturbing display color calibration settings for the current display device. Time-based adjustments are made in small steps in the beginning and end and large steps in the middle of the transition to provide perceptually smooth transition effect…. [An] operating system resource is provided to manage, synchronously or asynchronously, the visual effect on behalf of requesting applications, simplifying the coding of the application programs and providing consistency across application programs… [T]he operating system resource uses a reservation system to prevent conflict and interference between application programs.

Computing visible regions for a hierarchical view

This present invention (US Patent 7355609) relates to display systems utilizing graphical user interfaces, particularly to the rendering of portions of the image where the layers overlap. According to the Apple:

[This technique] determines the visible regions of potentially overlapping views and writes the visible regions to an output device. The visible regions may be determined using the visible-above region associated with a view. The views may have child, parent, and sibling views. A view may be any object capable of being displayed. In this way, the number of times that a pixel is written to the output device is reduced.