Patent ID: 6842484

Claim:
A system for forced intra-coding of a digital video signal composed of a sequence of image frames that comprise an entire image, each image frame comprising a plurality of macroblocks of pixels, said system comprising: an input for receiving an image frame of the digital video signal; a first memory for storing one or more macroblock access arrays, each macroblock access array containing a list of macroblock identifiers corresponding to macroblock locations within a predetermined region of the image frame; an intra-refresh macroblock location identification element, operably connected to said first memory, for selecting one or more macroblock refresh identifiers from said one or more macroblock access arrays; comparison logic for comparing said macroblock refresh identifiers with an identifier of a current macroblock; and a block-based coding element, operably connected to said comparison logic and to said input, wherein said block-based coding element is operable to force intra-coding of said current macroblock if the identifier of the current macroblock is equal to any of the one or more macroblock refresh identifiers.