Patent ID: 8218647

Claim:
A method of reconstructing an image sequence originally encoded in a variable bit rate representation, the variable bit rate representation comprising a first plurality of blocks of information and a second plurality of blocks of information, the first plurality of blocks of information comprising more blocks of information than the second plurality of blocks of information, the method comprising: receiving a second representation of the image sequence in which some blocks of information of the first plurality of blocks of information are interlaced with blocks of information of the second plurality of blocks of information to reduce a variation in a number of blocks of information per unit time in the image sequence; and reconstructing frames of the image sequence concurrently with the receiving, the reconstructing comprising: during a period of time when the received stream comprises blocks of information of the first plurality of blocks of information only, reconstructing frames of the image sequence based on blocks of information of the first plurality of blocks of information stored in a buffer and blocks of information received about in real time.