Patent ID: 7852916

Claim:
A method of specifying a frame reference list for decoding a sequence of video frames, each frame comprising a set of slices, each slice comprising one or more macroblocks that each comprises one or more partitions, wherein the data of each slice further comprises data for an original frame reference list, the method comprising: for each of a first slice of a first video frame and a second slice of a second video frame in the sequence of video frames storing data associated with a particular partition of a particular macroblock, wherein said data comprises a motion vector and an original reference frame index that indicates a frame number in the original frame reference list, the frame number indicating a specific frame in the sequence of frames that the motion vector is based upon, wherein the original frame reference list of the first slice is different than the original frame reference list of the second slice; mapping the original reference frame indexes of each of the first slice and the second slice to a canonical reference frame index using the original frame reference lists and a canonical frame reference list; and storing data for the canonical reference frame index in storage of a computer system.