ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,598,280, issued on April 7, was assigned to Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd. (Shenzhen, China).

"Video data processing method and apparatus, computer device, computer readable storage medium, and computer program product" was invented by Ying Hu (Shenzhen, China) and Shan Liu (San Jose, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A video data processing method includes generating, based on a spliced texture map and depth map, an encoded video bitstream of a free-view video based on multiple images collected by an ith camera in a camera array. The method further includes obtaining boundary metadata information indicating a scene boundary ...