Patent ID: 8345545

Claim:
A method for transmitting at least a portion of a video stream based on the variable capacity of a data link comprising: estimating a data link throughput; computing a video transmission rate by determining an instantaneous rate for each frame in a set of frames of the video stream and selecting a highest instantaneous rate among the instantaneous rates, wherein an instantaneous rate for a given frame is determined by accumulating the size of the given frame with sizes of preceding frames in the set that are arranged in accordance with corresponding frame deadlines at a receiver; in response to determining that the estimated data link throughput is insufficient to support the video transmission rate, modifying and transmitting the video stream such that the video stream is supportable by the data link throughput; and calculating R i = max k ⁢ ∑ j = 1 k ⁢ ⁢ L j T k - t , wherein R i is the video transmission rate for a user i, L k is the size of the given frame, T k is the frame deadline of the given frame, L j is the size of a frame in the set with a frame deadline that is at or precedes T k and t is a current time.