Patent ID: 7010037

Claim:
A data partitioning method for a scalable video encoder, the comprising the steps of: receiving video data; determining DCT coefficients for a plurality of macroblocks of a video frame; quantizing the DCT coefficients; converting the quantized DCT coefficients into (run, length) pairs; and for each the plurality of macroblocks in the video frame, determining a ratio |X i k | 2 /L i 2 , where a k-th (run, length) pair for an i-th block is L i k bits and has a coefficient value of X i k ; and if a k-th ratio for the k-th (run, length) pair is less than λ or if the k-th ratio is a first ratio that is not less than λ, putting the k-th (run, length) pair into a base layer, otherwise if the k-th ratio for the k-th (run, length) pair is greater than λ, putting the k-th (run, length) pair into an enhancement layer, where λ is determined in accordance with a Lagrangian calculation.