MULTI-RATE TRANSCODER FOR DIGITAL STREAMS

摘要

Methods and apparatus are provided to produce a plurality of different rate output bitstreams from a common input bit stream. Overhead data (30) is extracted from the input bit stream. The input bit stream is partially decoded (62). Thereafter, the at least partially decoded bit stream is re-encoded at different rates (64A, 64B... 64N), to produce multiple re-encoded bit streams (STREAM 1, STREAM 2... STREAM N) having different rates. The overhead data (30) is combined (60) with each re-encoded bit stream, thereby providing multiple versions of said encoded bit stream at different rates.