Patent ID: 8621543

Claim:
A method of distributed statistical multiplexing of video data, comprising: generating a plurality of blocks forming a pre-processed video media corresponding to an original video program formed of consecutive sub-portions of image content, the plurality of blocks including, for each of one or more sub-portions of the original video program, a plurality of interchangeable blocks that represent the same image content of the sub-portion, but have different sizes, and can be used interchangeably without changing other sub-portions of the pre-processed video media; transmitting at least some of the blocks, including for one or more sub-portions of the original video program a plurality of interchangeable blocks representing the sub-portion, to at least one remote multiplexer over a standard communication link; reconstructing a plurality of versions of the video media by the at least one multiplexer, for a plurality of communication channels, from at least some of the transmitted blocks, the reconstruction of each version including selecting for each sub-portion of the original video program, a single block to represent the sub-portion; and transmitting the plurality of reconstructed versions of the video media on the plurality of communication channels to respective different clients, wherein the blocks that can be used interchangeably to represent a sub-portion, represent the same image content, but have different sizes, wherein generating a pre-processed video media comprises generating a plurality of blocks for at least some sub-portions of the original video program and only a single block for one or more other sub-portions, wherein generating a pre-processed video media comprises selecting sub-portions for which a plurality of interchangeable blocks representing the same image content are generated and wherein the selection is performed responsive to an evaluation for each sub-portion of pixel values of the frames to which the sub-portion belongs, and wherein transmitting at least one of the blocks to a multiplexer comprises transmitting fewer than all the generated blocks to the multiplexer, such that one or more of the generated interchangeable blocks are never transmitted to the multiplexer.