A system for inhibiting use of a hand-operated machine by an impaired individual through detection of toxins in the individual has affixed to a portion of the machine which the operator regularly engages with his or her hands a porous membrane (5) impregnated with a substance (2) which reacts with a toxin by-product of an impairing substances such as alcohol, and another substance which causes the combined toxin and toxin-reacting substance to exhibit a color change. The system further contains ...

A color picture display apparatus is provided having a driving circuit for a display device so that a low light adjustment is not influenced by a high light adjustment during white balance adjustment. Horizontal blanking period is blanked by a transistor and a clamping potential of a low light level for white balance adjustment is added to the above blanked signal. The signal, to which a clamping potential was added, is gain-adjusted and clamped by a capacitor and a transistor. Next, the clamped...

A white balance correcting device for correcting white balance by using video signals is arranged to be capable of accurately obtaining white balance even in a case where a picture includes only a small white part therein. The white balance correcting device is arranged to divide a picture into a plurality of blocks, to obtain a mean value of signals by averaging signals of each divided block as representing the block and a peak value of luminance from a signal having the highest luminance among...

In recording audio information, an information medium in a format obtained by expanding the RTR (recordable/reproducible DVD) standard is used. For management information about each piece of information recorded on the information medium, an "audio information cell" is defined as a playback unit even for audio information as in the RTR standard. To a PGC (program chain) higher in level than the cell, "playback sequence" information about the relationship between other video information (movie ce...

In a digital VTR having a certain recording bit rate, within a range not higher than a remaining data rate after recording the bit stream, first HP data D1 is recorded in first specific regions, and second HP data D2 is recorded in second specific regions in specific tracks. In middle-speed and high-speed fast replay, the magnetic tape is transported continuously at a middle-speed or high-speed higher than the standard speed for normal replay, and the first HP data D1 is used in common, and at a...

When a recording menu screen is selected by a remote controller 13, a control unit 10 enters a recording programming mode to display the recording menu screen on a monitor 8. When any optional video file is selected from the list on said recording menu screen by a user, the area of the selected video file is registered as a recordable area and a recording programming screen is displayed on the monitor 8 to enable recording programming. Upon completion of the recording programming, when the contr...

The invention concerns a method and system for identifying commercial message segments of a video signal. A set of rules is applied for determining the occurrence of commercial messages with a higher degree of accuracy as compared to conventional methods. In general, method includes the steps of monitoring a digital bit stream comprising the video signal, detecting a change in a control field of the digital bit stream, and then selectively generating a commercial event notification responsive to...

By sequentially inputting images for each frame, sequentially extracting features from the inputted frame images, converting the features sequentially extracted into a feature series corresponding to the inputted frame image series, compressing the feature series in the direction of the time axis, storing the compressed feature series in the storage, sequentially extracting features separately from the images to be retrieved for each inputted frame, sequentially comparing the features of the ima...

The erasion level appending range of a file is instructed. According to this instruction, the erasion level is set. When this setting range does not agree with the cell unit of the current cell, the current cell is divided to set a sequence of divided cells. Playback management information of each of the divided cells and current cell is re-created, and erasion level information is appended to playback management information of the divided cell that belongs to the appending range.

In order to search for an image recorded on an optical disk 10, a registration trigger is generated automatically or in response to an instruction of the user from a microcomputer block 30, a pointer indicating the recording position of a main image which is used as an index image in a preset area of the optical disk 10 via a data processor 36 and disk drive 32, index image data which becomes the index image is created in an encoder section 50 and data is recorded from an index image buffer memo...