William G CaldwellIrvine, CA

6865339, Mar 8, 2005

Sep 19, 2000

09/665326

Melvin Gable - Cowan Heights CA, US
Roy Lewis - Westminister CA, US
William Caldwell - Fountain Valley CA, US

Indigita Corporation - Santa Ana CA

H04N007/26
H04N007/04

386109, 386104, 386 96

A “pause and resume” function and a “channel change” function for recording and playing interframe compressed audiovideo data, particularly MPEG data. The invention includes a digital track format and a method for recording one or more sessions from one or more streams of interframe compressed audiovideo data which has been synchronized to a reference clock. The invention adds special “splice point” indicators to recorded video material. The splice point indicators are added either periodically (e. g. , by recording a special reference clock) or when a discontinuity occurs in recording audiovideo data streams. Splice point indicators are used to determine the existence of a point of discontinuity in the recorded audiovideo data. The system and method enable pausing and later resuming recording of an audiovideo data stream such that the audiovideo data can be played back with proper resynchronization at each point of discontinuity (the “pause and resume” function). The format and method also allow for recording an abrupt change from one audiovideo data stream to a different audiovideo data stream having a different clock reference, such that the two recorded sequences are spliced together as one continuous recorded sequence that can be played back with resynchronization of the program audiovideo data at each splice point (the “channel change” function).

4935825, Jun 19, 1990

Dec 16, 1988

7/285808

Devon B. Worrell - Westminister CA
William C. Caldwell - Fountain Valley CA
Paul W. Hanmann - Anaheim CA
Robert W. Visser - Huntington Beach CA
Paul R. Nitza - Tustin CA

Emulex Corporation - Costa Mesa CA

G11B 509

360 54

A system for managing data errors and media defects on magnetically and optically encoded disks. The invention is a disk controller utilizing a cylinder-based defect management system that reduces the amount of physical media space needed for bad block data replacement blocks. A unique attribute is calculated for and stored with each data block on each track that permits the controller to rapidly determine if a desired data block is in the current track. Spare blocks within a cylinder may be allocated to any track within that cylinder, permitting the system to more efficiently handle larger media or data errors than prior art devices that are limited to a particular number of spare blocks per track. When a bad data block occurs, the data from that block and all subsequent blocks is "slipped" to succeeding data blocks, thereby preserving the contiguity of the logical data structure and minimizing disk access time. No re-vectoring to replacement data blocks is done until an entire track is replaced, thereby reducing the amount of error-handling time compared to prior art techniques.

6151443, Nov 21, 2000

May 16, 1997

8/858084

Melvin Gable - Cowan Heights CA
Roy Lewis - Westminister CA
William Caldwell - Fountain Valley CA

Indigita Corporation - Irvine CA

H04N 5917
H04N 5928

386109

A "pause and resume" function and a "channel change" function for recording and playing interframe compressed audiovideo data, particularly MPEG data. The invention includes a digital track format and a method for recording one or more sessions from one or more streams of interframe compressed audiovideo data which has been synchronized to a reference clock. The invention adds special "splice point" indicators to recorded video material. The splice point indicators are added either periodically (e. g. , by recording a special reference clock) or when a discontinuity occurs in recording audiovideo data streams. Splice point indicators are used to determine the existence of a point of discontinuity in the recorded audiovideo data. The system and method enable pausing and later resuming recording of an audiovideo data stream such that the audiovideo data can be played back with proper resynchronization at each point of discontinuity (the "pause and resume" function). The format and method also allow for recording an abrupt change from one audiovideo data stream to a different audiovideo data stream having a different clock reference, such that the two recorded sequences are spliced together as one continuous recorded sequence that can be played back with resynchronization of the program audiovideo data at each splice point (the "channel change" function).

6128433, Oct 3, 2000

Dec 31, 1997

9/001743

Melvin Gable - Cowan Heights CA
William Caldwell - Fountain Valley CA

Indigita Corporation - Irvine CA

H04N 576

386 87

A digital video tape drive and a method of controlling frequency drift in the tape drive. The tape drive includes a helical scan recorder in which the recording drum motor and the capstan motor arc synchronized to the frequency of a long-term reference clock derived from a reference signal (e. g. an MPEG program clock reference (PCR) signal or system clock reference (SCR) signal) embedded in digital video data to be recorded by the tape drive. The drum motor is also phase locked to the long-term reference clock signal. In addition, the drum motor is synchronized to a reference clock derived from the reference signal during playback of the digital video data.