Patent ID: 8068545

Claim:
A method of arranging image data representing a motion picture sequence within a memory sub-system in an image data processing system, the method comprising using a decoder to dynamically select the arrangement of image data for successive pictures of said sequence in said memory sub-system according to at least one of: measured characteristics of said image data, measured characteristics of the performance of said processing system, and known characteristics of subsequent processing of said image data within said image processing system; wherein the measured characteristics of said image data includes at least one of: variability of motion vectors encoded within received data, picture type, and image resolution; wherein the measured characteristics of the performance of said processing system includes at least one of: data cache stall rates for a cache memory in the memory sub-system, processor utilization, quality of service or other qualitative measurements that are perceptible to an end user of content being processed, and bandwidth of a link feeding data into or out of said image processing system; wherein the known characteristics of subsequent processing of said image data includes at least one of: encoded data size per picture of the sequence, and advance information relating to the content of the image stream contained in a data file; wherein measured characteristics of the image data at one part of the sequence are used to predict characteristics of a subsequent portion of the sequence, and the memory arrangement is controlled according to measured characteristics of recently processed portions of the sequence.