Balancing compressed storage requirements with decompression times during punt protection processing in a page printer

摘要

An imaging device and method optimize memory usage during a print overrun avoidance operation by employing selected compression schemes upon page bands while ensuring that required decompression times of the bands are met for subsequent rendering purposes. A preferred method includes compressing a band from a page of image data and, if an estimated decompression time for the compressed band does not satisfy a race-the-laser threshold for subsequent video imaging, then decompressing the band and measuring an actual decompression time. If the actual decompression time satisfies the race-the-laser threshold, then the method includes keeping the compressed band for subsequent video imaging. On the other hand, if the actual decompression time does not satisfy the race-the-laser threshold, then the band is re-compressed using an alternate compression scheme and re-evaluated similar to the originally compressed band to determine whether the recompressed band's decompression time will satisfy the race-the-laser threshold.