Patent ID: 6925249

Claim:
A method for recording compressed image data onto a storage medium, comprising the steps of: (a) compressing an image by: (i) dividing the image into a plurality of regions; (ii) for each region: (a) selecting a plurality of adjacent pixels corresponding to the same color component, wherein said selected pixels from a particular region form a pixel sample set, and wherein corresponding pixel sample sets from said plurality of regions form a group, (b) for each selected pixel, encoding a pixel value of said selected pixel to generate a fixed length token and a variable length token, (c) associating said variable length tokens for each pixel value in said pixel sample set to form a variable length token vector, and (d) arranging bits of said fixed length tokens to associate each bit of a pixel value with corresponding bits of other pixels values within said pixel sample set to form a fixed length token vector for each bit position of said fixed length tokens: (iii) for each group (a) forming a first bit stream including said variable length token vector of each of said plurality of regions, and (b) forming a second bit stream including said fixed length token vectors of each of said plurality of regions, (iv) forming a primary bit stream of constant length and if required, a supplemental bit stream of inconstant length, wherein both bit streams may include said first and second bit streams corresponding to each of said groups; and (v) repeating steps (ii)-(iv) for a next pixel sample set selected from each region until the pixels of each of said plurality of regions have been encoded and added to one of a plurality of primary bit streams and one of a plurality of supplemental bit streams; (b) recording each of said plurality of primary bit streams onto the storage medium; (c) storing each of said plurality of supplemental bit streams in a temporary memory location; and (d) after said plurality of primary bit streams have been recorded onto the storage medium, retrieving said plurality of supplemental bit streams from said temporary memory location and recording said supplemental bit streams onto the storage medium.