Patent ID: 6675387
Filing Date: 2004-01-06
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
In a digital video communication system including a server, a method of preparing digital video data using digital video data compression in a computer at said server for transmission to a settop box at a user terminal coupled to said server by a digital video signal distribution system, the method comprising:pre-rendering a bitmap to create a compressed form of the bitmap, the bitmap including content of a series of video images of the digital video data, the video images having a full-sized area; and determining a viewable area of the video images to be displayed, the viewable area of the video images is smaller than the full-sized area, wherein: the content includes at least one of fixed content and variable content, the fixed content having a lifetime in the series of video images, and portions of the variable content having lifetimes less than the lifetime of the fixed content; and the method further comprises encoding the content as at least one data set formatted as at least one fat macroblock and a fat macroblock header, said fat macroblock header identifying a plurality of macroblocks within said full-sized area, said plurality of macroblocks forming a fat macroblock from an array of rows and columns of macroblocks of said full-sized area.