Patent ID: 7324592

Claim:
A method for encoding a plurality of videos, comprising: acquiring a plurality of input videos, in which frames of each input video are acquired at a fixed sampling rate; applying concurrently and in parallel joint analysis to the plurality of input videos to determine a variable and non-uniform temporal sampling rate for each input video, so that a combined distortion is minimized and a combined frame rate constraint is satisfied, and in which the joint analysis minimizes an objective function min ⁢ ⁢ ∑ i ⁢ D i ⁢ ⁢ such ⁢ ⁢ that ⁢ ⁢ N coded ⁡ ( T ) ≤ N cap ⁡ ( T ) , where D i is the combined distortion of video i, N coded (T) is a current frame rate, and N cap (T) is the combined frame rate expressed as a total number of frames that can be coded per unit of time T, and in which the value of N cap (T) is determined according to the number of video encoders and a maximum frame rate of each encoder; and sampling frames of each input video at the associated variable and non-uniform temporal sampling rate to produce a plurality of output videos having variable temporal resolutions.