Patent ID: 7676096

Claim:
A method of operating upon a sequence of data frames that occur at a predetermined frame rate for transmission between an encoder and a decoder, each of the data frames including a plurality of luminance components and a plurality of chrominance components, the plurality of components provided within pixel data that is spatially identifiable in horizontal and vertical position, comprising the steps of: inputting the plurality of data frames into the encoder; separating, using the encoder, for each frame, the frame of pixel data into a separate data groups, each separate data group corresponding to one of the color and intensity components, and each separate data group maintaining a spatial relationship of the pixel data associated with the component to the frame; for each separate data group, splitting, using the encoder, the data group into a plurality of columns each containing a corresponding column of the pixel data, each column corresponding to a stripe of the frame and having an edge, such that the plurality of columns together account for the entire area of the frame with a part of the edge of adjacent columns sharing a common border; for each of the plurality of columns in each of the separate data groups, independently encoding, using the encoder, the pixel data for each of the columns to obtain a plurality of encoded columns containing encoded and compressed column data, the step of independently encoding including the steps of inserting, using the encoder, a guard border around all edges of the column to obtain a guard banded column that assists in eliminating artifacts when reconstituting the frame by retaining edge information of the column; and operating, using the encoder, upon the guard banded column to obtain the encoded and compressed column data for the encoded column, the step of operating including the steps of: transforming, using the encoder, the guard banded column into a spatial frequency domain using a wavelet transform, the guard banded column containing a plurality of different frequency bands; and separately compressing, using the encoder, each of the plurality of different frequency bands by eliminating precision within data therein to obtain a plurality of compressed frequency bands, the step of compressing eliminating precision in certain higher frequency ones of the different frequency bands than other lower frequency ones of the different frequency bands; and assembling, using the encoder, for transmission each of the encoded columns for each separate data group for each of the plurality of frames to obtain transmission ready data.