Patent ID: 6907081

Claim:
A method of operating an on-line MPEG video encoder during real-time encoding of an incoming video stream to produce an MPEG Transport Stream, the incoming video stream having video frames, the video frames having respective time codes, said method comprising: the on-line MPEG video encoder comparing the time codes of video frames in a first portion of the incoming video stream to a first time code specification to locate, in the incoming video stream, a first video frame having a time code specified by the first time code specification, and the on-line MPEG video encoder starting a new closed group of pictures (GOP) in the MPEG Transport Stream including the first video frame encoded as a first I frame of the new closed GOP, and the on-line MPEG video encoder comparing the time codes of video frames in a second portion of the incoming video stream to a second time code specification to identify, in the incoming video stream, a second video frame having a time code specified by the second time code specification, and the on-line MPEG video encoder terminating a GOP in the MPEG transport stream to produce a terminated GOP, the terminated GOP having a last video frame immediately preceding the second video frame.