Patent ID: 6968091

Claim:
A method of processing information represented by an original series of (run, level) pairs, said method comprising: a) inspecting the (run, level) pairs in the original series of (run, level) pairs to determine whether or not modification of at least one (run, level) pair in the original series of (run, level) pairs would produce a desirable decrease in a number of bits required for variable-length encoding of said information despite introduction of noise into the variable-length encoding of said information; and b) upon determining that modification of said at least one (run, level) pair in the original series of (run, level) pairs would produce a desirable decrease in the number of bits required for variable-length encoding of said information despite introduction of noise into the variable-length encoding of said information, modifying said at least one (run, level) pair to produce a modified series of (run, level) pairs from the original series of (run, level) pairs; and c) variable-length encoding the modified series of (run, level) pairs.