Patent ID: 8428427

Claim:
In a system providing an entertainment program comprised of an audio and a video portion which portions are stored in compressed digital form, the content of said audio and video portions being related to each other, said video and audio portions each including time flags corresponding to said respective portion, which time flags are also stored by said system, a method of retrieving from storage and presenting to the viewer sound and images that are perceived by said viewer as properly timed with each other, said method including the following steps: a) retrieving from storage said audio and video portions in compressed form and said time flags, decompressing said audio and video portions, said decompressed audio portion comprising digital samples of a digital audio signal and said decompressed video portion comprising digital samples of a digital video signal, each said digital audio and digital video signal having a respective alpha length, which alpha length is the time it takes for a contiguous block of digital samples to play; b) in response to comparing at least one time flag associated with said digital video signal and one time flag associated with said digital audio signal of step a), changing the alpha length of at least one of said digital audio signal or said digital video signal to reduce any timing errors between them; c) wherein, when the changing step b) operates by shortening the alpha length of a contiguous block of digital samples in said digital audio signal, one or more of the digital samples included therein are deleted and when said changing step b) operates by increasing said alpha length, digital samples are added thereto wherein in step c), when samples are added to or deleted from said contiguous block it is done in a manner such that audible frequency components of the audible version of the resulting digital audio signal are maintained at the same pitch they originally had in respect to the unaltered version of said digital audio signal from step a).