Patent ID: 8634413

Claim:
A method of decoding a signal transmitted over a network, comprising: receiving, at a decoder, a compressed stream containing a sequence of encoded frames comprising key frames and predicted frames, the key frames having been intra-coded, the predicted frames having been encoded using motion-compensated predictive encoding with reference to respective one or more reference frames, at least some of the encoded frames having code elements designating said frames that have the code elements to be a cached frame corresponding to a frame cached at the encoder; upon receiving any frame designated to be a cached frame, retaining temporarily said any designated frame in a frame cache, at the decoder; with said any designated frame retained in the frame cache at the decoder, detecting packet loss affecting a subsequent one of the encoded frames sent to the decoder; with the decoder, sending a packet loss detection signal to the encoder indicating that packet loss has been detected; in response to the packet loss detection, the decoder receiving, from the encoder, a generated frame having been encoded by the encoder using motion-compensated inter-picture compression encoding with reference to said frame cached at the encoder as a substitute frame for the frame affected by the packet loss, the generated frame being marked to indicate that the generated frame can be decoded from said any designated frame retained in the frame cache at the decoder; with the decoder, decoding the generated frame with reference to said any designated frame retained in the frame cache at the decoder which corresponds to the frame cached at the encoder; and with the decoder, producing a reconstructed frame sequence with an uncompressed frame based at least in part on said decoding of the generated frame.