Patent ID: 8588310

Claim:
A method for controlling delivery of encoded bits to a decoder, the method comprising: determining a number of bits associated with a variable system delay, wherein the variable system delay is a time interval between each of a plurality of frames being encoded and decoded and is measured with respect to a current time for each of the plurality of frames; determining a number of bits in an encoder buffer for an encoder; determining a number of bits in a decoder buffer for a decoder configured to receive encoded bits from the encoder based on the bits associated with the variable system delay and the bits in the encoder buffer; and controlling delivery of the encoded bits to the decoder based on the number of bits determined to be in the decoder buffer, wherein the variable system delay is a last system delay, the last system delay is a time interval from the current time minus an initial system delay to the current time, and the number of bits associated with the variable system delay comprises a number of bits generated in the last system delay; and wherein determining the number of bits currently stored in the decoder buffer for the decoder comprises subtracting the bits in the encoder buffer from the number of bits generated in the last system delay.