Patent ID: 8199809

Claim:
A method comprising: generating a base layer being sufficient to permit generation of a viewable video sequence of lesser quality than is represented by a source video sequence; generating one or more enhancement layers being sufficient to enhance the quality of the viewable video sequence generated from the base layer to enable a fine granularity scalability (FGS) range of quality of an output video that is formed from a combination of the base layer and the one or more enhancement layers, the one or more enhancement layers being generated by subtracting a reconstructed layer from a subsection of the source video sequence, wherein the reconstructed layer is selected from a group of at least two separate reconstructed layers, and wherein the one or more enhancement layers capture differences between the viewable video sequence and the source video sequence; storing the base layer and the one or more enhancement layers; predicting a subsection of the one or more enhancement layers according to a prediction mode of a plurality of prediction modes, the plurality of prediction modes including prediction using the source video sequence and a combination of a previous enhancement frame and the base layer, wherein the one or more enhancement layers comprise two or more enhancement layers; selecting a subset of the two or more enhancement layers to be combined with the stored base layer, based on a bandwidth of a transmission medium; combining the subset of the two or more enhancement layers and the stored base layer into a single encoded bitstream; and transmitting that bitstream over the transmission medium to a decoder.