Patent ID: 7747143

Claim:
A method of recording a video sequence having a first video frame and a second video frame, comprising: providing a random access memory having a plurality of memory locations corresponding to a plurality of memory addresses; using a linked list to allocate different first and second regions, each region comprising contiguous ones of the memory locations, where the first region and the second region are separated by at least one intervening region of memory locations; compressing the first and the second video frames into a first variable sized compressed frame and a second variable size compressed frame having a different size than the first compressed frame; writing the first compressed frame to a first memory location having a first memory address within the first region, and writing the second compressed frame to a second memory location having a second memory address within the second region; storing a first frame address and second frame address in a frame index corresponding to the first and second memory addresses in the first and second regions, respectively, where the compressed frames are written; and allowing the second video frame to be cued within a single frame latency time while playing back the first video frame from the first region by obtaining the second frame address from the frame index, retrieving the second compressed frame from the second region, decompressing the second compressed frame, and playing back the second video frame.