Patent ID: 8565318

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: circuitry to analyze both a first encoded stream to identify a first packet occurring before a splice point and the second encoded stream to identify a second packet occurring after the splice point; circuitry to identify both a first timing value included in the first packet and a second timing value included in the second packet; circuitry to determine a difference between the timing values; circuitry to revise timing values included in packets within one of the streams, said revision according to the determined difference; circuitry to splice the second encoded stream into the first encoded stream; wherein the apparatus is operable to operate as a midpoint between an encoder and a decoder, the apparatus to receive the first encoded stream from the encoder, to splice the second encoded stream into the first encoded stream, and to send the spliced encoded first stream to the decoder; wherein the apparatus is operable to splice the second stream into the first stream independently of whether any processing resources are available to decode and re-encode the first encoded stream; and wherein the second encoded stream is spliced into the first encoded stream without setting any discontinuity bits in any packets included in the streams; and wherein the first encoded stream is encoded according to a Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) protocol and the circuitry is further operable to: analyze both the first encoded stream to identify a last frame to be played before the splice point and the second encoded stream to identify a first frame to played after the splice point; identify both a first presentation time stamp included in the last frame and a second presentation time stamp included in the first frame; determine a delta between the presentation time stamps, the delta representation number of 90 kHz counts between the presentation time stamps; identify an amount needed to round the delta to the nearest multiple of three thousand and three 90 kHz counts, the identified amount being no greater than half of the frame time for the streams; and adjust presentation time stamps included in packets of one of the streams according to both the identified amount and the determined difference.