Faroudja

Directional correlational deinterlacing (DCDi)

Faroudja Labs produced upconversion equipment to allow broadcasters to continue using existing equipment to broadcast legacy NTSC material during the transition to HDTV.

Faroudja then developed DCDi^® (Directional Correlational Deinterlacing) technology to eliminate the jagginess that conventional upconverters introduced to diagonal edges in video. DCDi's unique algorithm identifies all the moving edges in a scene and adjusts the angle of interpolation at each pixel so that the interpolation always follows the edge instead of crossing it, eliminating staircasing or jagged edge artifacts.

This technology, in combination with its decoding, deinterlacing and enhancement technologies, won an Emmy Award from National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2001. The DCDi algorithm is now incorporated into ST's video controllers that were derived from the Faroudja technology. Many consumer electronics products utilizing this Emmy award-winning technology leverage the Faroudja brand with the "DCDi^® by Faroudja", "Faroudja DCDi Cinema^®" and "Faroudja DCDi Edge^®" logos on their products and marketing materials.

Film mode detection technology

Faroudja, acquired by ST in 2008, first invented and patented film mode detection or 3:2 pulldown detection in 1989. Film-originated content that has gone through 3:2 pulldown for conversion to NTSC is detected and the original film frames are recreated by blending the fields back together. However, this creates an artifact known as "a comb".

Faroudja became the first company with "bad edit detection" capability to detect the original frames of film within the video stream and reconstruct an accurate image. This produced an image free of motion artifacts with full vertical resolution. One environment where this creates a lot of value is when users switch back and forth between commercials on TV (which are not film mode) and a movie which is film mode. This film mode processing is widely accepted in the industry.

TrueLife enhancement

Conventional video enhancement is done by a "peaking filter" that enhances the high-frequency components of the video signal. However, this creates unwanted artifacts. ST does not use a peaking filter to enhance an image, rather uses its TrueLife™ Enhancement technology to identify transitions considered to be the details in an image such as skin texture, freckles or hair. These detail transitions are deliberately enhanced making them more visible and more lifelike. The technology also enhances large edges to create greater depth of perception without introducing visual artifacts or distortion.

Motion adaptive noise reduction

Noise on an image is typically eliminated or reduced by filtering. Filtering can be done spatially, (2-D), or temporally, (3-D). Spatial filtering results in a soft image with loss of detail. Temporal filtering does not create loss of detail, but if done incorrectly, does result in smearing or ghosting of moving objects in the image. ST uses Motion Adaptive processing to reduce noise without introducing smearing.