Patent ID: 7437054

Claim:
An apparatus for controlling reverse-play of a video bitstream, comprising: a picture divider for classifying the video bitstream into intra-coded pictures, predictive-coded pictures, and bidirectional predictive-coded pictures, the video bitstream having a plurality of picture groups; a first frame buffer for storing the bidirectional predictive-coded pictures; a video decoder for decoding the predictive-coded pictures; a frame memory for storing the decoded predictive-coded pictures output from the video decoder; an intra-frame encoder for encoding the decoded predictive-coded pictures into an intra-coded picture format; a second frame buffer for storing the intra-coded pictures and the encoded intra-coded pictures; and a buffer controller for outputting the pictures stored in the first and second frame buffers to the video decoder in accordance with pointing information about the pictures stored in the first and second frame buffers, wherein during a reverse-play operation, a current-playing picture group is read out from the first and second frame buffers and the frame memory and then decoded, while a previous picture group of the current-playing picture group is received in a normal play direction and then decoded.