Patent ID: 7075986

Claim:
An apparatus for interframe coding a video signal comprising: a first interframe coder operative to receive and interframe code an input video signal to generate a first interframe coded bitstream having a first bit rate; a second or an additional interframe coder operative to receive the video signal and interframe code the input video signal to generate a second interframe or an additionally coded bitstream having a second bit rate which is different than the first bit rate, such that each of the first and second bitstreams is an independently viewable version of the video signal; and a switch frame coder that interframe codes transition data that, when decoded by an interframe decoder that was used to decode the first bitstream immediately prior thereto, compensates for visual discrepancies between a decoded version of the first bitstream and a decoded version of the second bitstream, such that decoding of the second bitstream with said decoder immediately after decoding the transition data provides a continuous video sequence without visual artifacts that would otherwise be present due to the difference in the bit rates of the first and second bitstreams.