High resolution network video camera with massively parallel implementation of image processing, compression and network server

A network comprising:

• a high resolution image sensor;
• a computer network interface for transmission off camera of image data streams originated by said image sensor;
• a multi stage pipelined digital image processor capable of processing and compression of said image data at an output rate of said image sensor, wherein said image processor comprises an image processing pipeline formed by multiple distinct stages, wherein most of said stages perform distinctly different image processing operations, wherein each said stage has an output latch or a buffer to accent input data from the output latch or the buffer of one or more of other said stages, wherein said image data propagates from one stage to another stage, and wherein each of said stages performs a respective operation on said image data concurrently and synchronously with most of other said stases performing their respective operations;
• and
• a microprocessor or a CPU, wherein said image processing pipeline comprises measurement engines configured to accumulate image brightness and color statistics, and wherein said measurement engines include means for communicating said statistics to said microprocessor or CPU.

A network video camera comprising:

• a high resolution image sensor;
• a computer network interface for transmission off camera of image data streams originated by said image sensor;
• a multi stage pipelined digital image processor capable of processing and compression of image data at an output rate of said image sensor, wherein said image processor comprises an image processing pipeline formed by multiple distinct stages, wherein most of said stages perform distinctly different image processing operations, wherein each said stage has an output latch or a buffer to accept input data from the output latch or the buffer of one or more of other said stages, wherein said image data propagates from one stage to another stage, wherein each of said stages performs a respective operation on said image data concurrently and synchronously with most of other said stages performing their respective operations, and wherein said network video camera is capable of concurrent output of image sequences of different sizes and resolutions;
• and
• one or more image memory buffers and an image memory buffer access controller, wherein said access controller is configured to store images in the image memory buffer and to read stored images from the image memory buffer, and to reduce resolution and size of said images by performing image decimation and image windowing.