Patent ID: 7840412

Claim:
A method of audio encoding a data stream signal that carries audio and video data, including: receiving audio and video data, via an input data stream signal; encoding, via an encoder implemented in hardware, the audio data of the input data stream signal, for an integer number of N audio frames of the audio data, to have a mean effective audio frame length F that equals a video frame length 1/f v over an integer number of M frames of a sequence of video data, where f v equals a video frame rate of the video data, wherein the encoding includes varying, using the encoder implemented in hardware, effective audio frame lengths F of the audio frames per a respective audio frame index j in a defined sequence of effective audio frame lengths F(j) for the sequence of M frames of video data, wherein each respective audio frame, index j, has a structure that includes (i) a number of blocks in a head overlap H(j), (ii) a number of blocks in a tail overlap T(j), and (iii) a number of blocks in between the head overlap and the tail overlap equal to a total number of blocks in the audio frame k minus the quantity of the sum of the head overlap H(j) plus the tail overlap T(j), further wherein the head overlap comprises a length of only (a) overlap O or (b) overlap O+1 long, which enables each audio frame to be tagged via a 1-bit tag to indicate its size and differentiate between short and long audio frames, and wherein each block of the audio frame is tagged via a 1-bit tag to indicate its redundancy so as to differentiate redundant and non-redundant blocks of the respective frame; and outputting a data stream signal that carries encoded audio and video data, wherein the output data stream signal can be spliced at each video frame of the sequence of M video frames without degradation to audio information of the audio data of corresponding audio frames.