Patent ID: 8687488

Claim:
An information processing device comprising: encoding circuitry to encode image data to generate a codestream, the image data being for transmission to an other information processing device; hardware processing circuitry including: a controlling unit to control whether or not main data of the codestream is to be transmitted based on whether or not an amount of data of the codestream generated by the encoding circuitry exceeds an allowable rate that is an upper limit value of a bitrate at which the codestream is flawlessly transmittable; and a packetizing unit to packetize the codestream into packets when the amount of data of the codestream does not exceed the allowable rate, and to packetize only a header of the codestream when the amount of data of the codestream exceeds the allowable rate, based on control performed by the controlling unit; and transmitting circuitry to transmit the packets packetized by the packetizing unit to the other information processing device, wherein, before the codestream is held in a buffer, the controlling unit controls whether or not the main data of the codestream is to be transmitted, wherein the packetizing unit reads the codestream held in the buffer and packetizes the read codestream, and wherein the controlling unit includes: a monitoring unit to monitor an amount of buffer, the amount of buffer indicating an amount of data of the codestream held in the buffer; an allowable-rate setting unit to set the allowable rate based on a current amount of buffer monitored by the monitoring unit and an upper limit value of a transmittable bitrate of a transmission channel through which the packets are transmitted to the other information processing device; a determining unit to determine whether or not the amount of data of the codestream exceeds the allowable rate set by the allowable-rate setting unit; a supplying unit to supply the codestream to the buffer to be held therein; and an adding unit to add flag information to the header of the codestream when the determining unit determines that the amount of data of the codestream exceeds the allowable rate, wherein, when the flag information is added to the header of the codestream, the packetizing unit discards the main data of the codestream and packetizes only the header.