Patent ID: 7379589

Claim:
A method for speeding up transmission of video over a computer network, comprising: dividing an image into a plurality of regions, each region being made up of a plurality of pixels, each pixel being represented by an x-bit color; identifying a plurality of distinct colors in each region; for each region, selecting from the plurality of distinct colors, n distinct colors with the highest occurring frequency within that region, with n being less than or equal to sixteen, where sixteen is a number of distinct colors to be used to represent that region; for each region, selecting from remaining distinct colors within the plurality of distinct colors, 16-n distinct colors, wherein each of the 16-n distinct colors differs the most from the selected n distinct colors; generating a color map for each region using the n and 16-n selected distinct colors; generating a 4-bit bitmap for each region by assigning one of the selected distinct colors to each selected pixel in that region; compressing the color map and the 4-bit bitmap for each region with a PNG compression algorithm; and forwarding the compressed color map and 4-bit bitmap for each region to a destination connected to a computer network.