Patent ID: 6983017

Claim:
A video decoding system for receiving a digital bitstream and for decoding the digital bitstream, the system comprising: a counter for counting a particular picture type of a plurality of pictures; a video decoder for decoding the digital bitstream to generate the plurality of pictures, each picture being associated with a flag for providing an indication on whether or not the picture is to be reduced in size to picture data prior to being stored, the indication of the flag being adaptively determined by the counter and after a picture type of the associated picture has been first determined by the decoder; means for converting one or more pictures to picture data; memory comprising a plurality of buffers, the picture being stored in a buffer as the picture data when the indication of the associated flag is indicating armed, and the picture being stored in two or more buffers without size reduction when the indication of the associated flag is indicating unarmed; and recovery means for recovering the pictures from the picture data and for providing the pictures to the video decoder for use during decoding of the digital bitstream.