AUDIO/VIDEO TIMING DISCREPANCY MANAGEMENT AUDIO/VIDEO TIMING DISCREPANCY MANAGEMENT

摘要

A method is provided for encoding of digital video signal segments which are interleaved to form a single system stream (video STD plus audio STD). In order to enable seamless joining of the segments, control of the video system layer buffer loading is related to the loading of the video layer buffer (VBV occupancy). Starting from an idealised match at the point the first picture is to be read out of the decoder buffer, the point at which the first picture is to be read out of the system layer buffer is adjusted by an amount determined by the predicted duration of the segment and the point at which the last frame of the segment is due to be read out. The adjustment prevents possible overlap of segment timing values derived initially from the idealised match case. The technique has particular application to interactive multimedia applications where real time splicing of video clips is required with minimal visual discontinuity.