Patent ID: 6973130

Claim:
For use with a predictive field or frame based encoded bitstream, each field or frame having multiple decodable subsets that can independently be recognized directly from the bitstream, an improvement comprising: a region identification signal stored on machine readable media; said region identification signal identifying all decodable subsets that represent an independently encoded object appearing as a subset of a field or frame; wherein said signal is adapted to permit extraction of data representing the independently encoded object by decoding the identified subsets directly from the bitstream; at least one region map, corresponding to the region identification signal, the region map providing an indication for each and every separately decodable subset of the encoded field or frame representation of the image whether that separately decodable subset is required to be decoded in order to completely decode the subset of the image; wherein each separately decodable subset is an image slice; each region map includes multiple entries, including one for each slice for the encoded field or frame, where each entry indicates whether the associated slice includes image data corresponding to the independently encoded region associated with the region map; and each region map provides an indication of those slices that must be decoded in order to completely decode the independently encoded region from a field or frame encoded representation of the associated image without decoding other image slices of the field or frame encoded representation.