Patent ID: 7620294

Claim:
In a system that includes an MPEG decoder and has access to a stored MPEG stream, a method for displaying a reconstructed MPEG stream based on the stored MPEG stream in an accelerated speed in a forward or reverse mode, comprising: receive a command for playing back a stored MPEG stream at a specified playback rate in either a forward or reverse mode, the specified playback rate comprising only one of a plurality of different playback rates that are available by a playback module of the system for playing back the stored MPEG stream; an act of identifying, from an index of I-frames of the stored MPEG stream, a selected number of the I-frames to be included in a reconstructed MPEG stream having the specified playback rate, and wherein at least one playback rate that is available by the playback module will result in less than all of the I-frames being selected for playback, with at least one or more of the indexed I-frames being skipped between the selected I-frames; an act of generating the reconstructed MPEG stream by including the selected I-frames in the reconstructed MPEG stream and inserting one or more blank predictive frames between the selected I-frames, wherein the selected I-frames and the blank predictive frames that are included in the reconstructed MPEG stream are selected to generate the specified playback rate of the stored MPEG stream as the reconstructed MPEG stream; and an act of decoding the reconstructed MPEG stream using the MPEG decoder for display on a display device associated with the system at the specified playback rate.