Method and system for real time motion picture segmentation and superposition

A method comprising:

• receiving a background frame having an arbitrary background;
• receiving an input frame having a picture part of interest within said arbitrary background;
• and
• separating, using said background frame and said input frame, said picture part of interest from said arbitrary background, wherein said separating comprises time aligning the background frame and the input frame to account for different path lengths and generating one or both of:
• a luminance difference between luminance signal values of said input frame and said background frame;
• or
• a chrominance difference between chrominance signal values of said input frame and said background frame.

A system comprising:

• a converting unit configured to convert red, green, and blue (RGB) color signals of an input frame to an input frame luminance signal and input frame chrominance signals, said input frame comprising a picture part of interest and an arbitrary background;
• a mask generating unit configured to generate a picture part of interest mask using one or both of:
• a luminance difference based on said input frame luminance signal and a background frame;
• or
• a chrominance difference based on said input frame chrominance signals and said background frame;
• and
• a separator unit configured to separate the picture part of interest from said input frame using said picture part of interest mask and time alignment signals derived from the input frame to align the mask with the input frame.

A picture part of interest separator comprising:

• a window building unit configured to create a background luminance window from a frame input to the picture part of interest separator;
• a converting unit configured to convert signals of the input frame to a frame luminance signal and frame chrominance signals;
• a mask generating unit configured to use the background luminance window from the window building unit and converted signals from the converting unit to:
• identify pixels of the input frame corresponding to a picture part of interest;
• and
• generate a mask indicating a location of the picture part of interest within the input frame based on the identification;
• and
• a separator unit configured to separate the picture part of interest from said input frame using the mask generated by the mask generating unit to output a separated picture part of interest (PPI), the separator unit including a time aligner configured to generate time aligned signals from the input frame.

An image processing system comprising:

• a picture part of interest separator configured to:
• convert signals of a frame input to the picture part of interest separator to a frame luminance signal and frame chrominance signals;
• identify pixels of the input frame corresponding to a picture part of interest based in part upon the converted signals;
• generate a mask indicating a location of the picture part of interest within the input frame;
• obtain time alignment signals corresponding to the input frame;
• and
• separate the picture part of interest from said input frame using the mask and the time alignment signals to produce a separated picture part of interest (PPI);
• and
• a combining unit configured to produce an embedded image including the picture part of interest from the separated PPI and a basic image input to the combining unit.