Patent ID: 8121197

Claim:
A method for decompressing a variable length inter-block dependent compressed video input data stream wherein the input data stream comprises macroblocks, the method comprising: in a first main process using a first processing array: decompressing a first video frame of the input data stream; producing a first independent variable length coefficient data set responsive to the first video frame data; producing a first fixed-size metadata data set responsive to the first video frame data; and storing the first independent variable length coefficient data set and the first fixed-size metadata data set in memory; and in a second main process using a second processing array that is different than the first processing array, executing substantially in parallel with the first main process: decompressing the macroblocks of the input data stream by decoding the stored first independent variable length coefficient data set using the stored first fixed-size metadata data set and using at least one previously-stored reference frame, so as to generate a desired output video frame; wherein the method further comprises: commencing execution of the first main process on a second frame of input data as soon as said storing of the first video frame data is completed, so that the first main process is decompressing one frame ahead of the second main process; wherein the first fixed-size metadata data set contains properties of each macroblock that instruct the second processing array for decoding each macroblock.