Patent ID: 8649426

Claim:
A method of encoding in real time a video signal that is associated with a videoconference or telepresence session, the method comprising: capturing a stream of video data comprising a series of sequential video frames; separating the video frames into a plurality of frame segments, wherein each frame segment represents a part of a complete video frame; encoding each frame segment independently and in parallel to generate parallel encoded data streams, one for each of the plurality of frame segments, each encoded data stream containing a sequence of frame segment instances each corresponding to a particular frame segment in the video frames, and each encoded data stream containing I-frame segment instances that carry complete information about a particular frame segment and P-frame segment instances that carry partial information about the particular frame segment, the partial information representing information that has changed relative to a previous frame segment instance in that encoded data stream, and wherein the encoding of the frame segments for each frame is performed such that when an instance of one of the frame segments within a particular frame is an I-frame segment instance, at least one of the other frame segment instances in that particular frame is a P-frame segment instance, whereby in the respective parallel encoded data streams in any period of time when an I-frame segment instance is present in one of the parallel encoded data streams, a P-frame segment instance is present in at least one of the other parallel encoded data streams; transmitting the parallel encoded data streams independently over a network to a receiver to permit the receiver to decode each frame segment and recombine the decoded frame segments from the different encoded data streams to reproduce an image; wherein during transmission of I-frame segment instances of one of the frame segments, P-frame segment instances of all other frame segments are transmitted.