Patent ID: 7756206

Claim:
A method, comprising: decoding, using a video decoding device, a base quality layer from a scalable video data bit stream; decoding, using the video decoding device, at least one fine grain scalability enhancement layer from the bit stream, each of the at least one fine granularity scalability enhancement layer being coded directly or indirectly relative to the base quality layer, wherein the at least one fine grain scalability enhancement layer includes only fine grain scalability enhancement information and is associated with an identifier that is drawn from a predetermined sequence of numbers used to identify all enhancement layers and the base quality layer, and wherein the base quality layer and each of the at least one fine grain scalability enhancement layer are associated with different identifiers; decoding a subsequent enhancement layer including a first base dependency identifier indicating that coding of the subsequent enhancement layer is performed relative to a layer that contains only fine grain scalability enhancement information; and decoding an additional subsequent enhancement layer including a second base dependency identifier indicating that coding of the additional subsequent enhancement layer is performed relative to a layer that contains no fine grain scalability enhancement information.