Patent ID: 7813564

Claim:
A method for compressing a set of sequential digital images to achieve an average compressed data rate for the set of images, comprising the steps of: (a) specifying a threshold viewing distance and a desired average compressed data rate; (b) selecting a small subset of images from the set of sequential images; (c) applying the threshold viewing distance as an input for computing compression parameters; (d) compressing the small subset of images with the compression parameters to produce compressed data; (e) calculating an average compressed data rate for the small subset of images; f) comparing the average compressed data rate for the small subset of images to the desired average compressed data rate; g) compressing remaining images from the set of images that are not in the small subset of images, if the average compressed data rate for the small subset of images is less than or equal to the desired average compressed data rate, using the compression parameters that were used for the small subset of images without recompressing the small subset of images; h) otherwise, modifying the threshold viewing distance and repeating above steps c) through h).