Patent ID: 8817885

Claim:
A video decoder comprising: a decoding part for decoding H.264 encoded entities within a bitstream to reconstruct original entities; a header processing part for obtaining reference information from header information within the bitstream, the reference information indicating whether each of the H.264 encoded entities corresponds to a non-reference entity or a reference entity, the indication being independent of whether the H.264 encoded entities are an I, P, or B picture-type and the indication being a part of a header in the bitstream; a virtually decoded entity buffer descriptor for storing identification information about a virtual decoded entity buffer, the virtual decoded entity buffer being configured to buffer at least one previously processed virtually decoded entity, the virtually decoded buffer descriptor being configured to store the identification information regardless of whether the at least one previously processed virtually decoded entity is a reference entity; and a skip determiner for, when receiving a skip command, determining whether or not a current one of the H.264 encoded entity corresponds to a first field based on the stored identification information, and for instructing the decoding part to skip non-reference entities from a non-reference entity that follows immediately after a currently decoded entity, wherein the skip determiner determines a current one of the encoded entities as a first field if the virtually decoded entity has the same type of picture as the current encoded entity, if the virtually decoded entity has different kinds of reference information than the current encoded entity, if the virtually decoded entity has different frame numbers than the current encoded entity, or if the virtually decoded picture buffer contains a field pair based on the identification information stored in the virtually decoded picture buffer descriptor, and wherein the skip determiner determines whether a slice to be decoded is a beginning slice or not and whether the slice is also included in a non-reference entity or not, and when the slice to be decoded is determined as a beginning slice and included in the non-reference entity, the skip determiner instructs the decoding part to skip the encoded entity including the slice to be decoded.