Patent ID: 9509951
Filing Date: 2016-11-29
CPC Classification: H04L,H04N

Claim Text:
1. A switching apparatus for switching compressed video streams, the switching apparatus comprising: at first input and a second input, each of the first and second inputs being operable to receive an input video stream from a camera; an output for outputting an output video stream, wherein the input video streams are compressed video streams, wherein each compressed video stream is represented by a sequence of groups of frames, wherein each group of frames includes a key frame and at least one inter frame; a switching module operable to receive a switch request and to switch the input video streams in the output video stream, so that a first compressed video stream of the input video streams is stopped and a second compressed video stream of the input video streams is started, wherein the output video stream is a compressed video stream; wherein the switching module is configured to stop the first compressed video stream after a frame is completely transferred to the output video stream and before the transfer of a next frame of the first compressed video stream to the output video stream is started; and wherein the switching module is configured to start the transmission of the second compressed video stream in the output video stream with a cached key frame, wherein the cached key frame is prior than the last frame of the first compressed video stream being transmitted to the output video stream.