DATA COMPRESSION ASSEMBLY HAVING SEVERAL DATA-COMPRESSION CHANNELS

摘要

A data compression assembly has several data compression channels which may be encoders encoding different programs according to an MPEG standard. A data compression channel comprises a data compressor and a buffer. The data compressor compresses input data. The buffer temporarily stores the compressed data and provides the compressed data in the form of an output data stream. Indications of compressed data quality versus extent of compression are established for respective data compression channels. A total output bit rate is partitioned over respective output data streams depending on these indications. The extent of compression in respective data compression channels is controlled individually based on output data stream bit rate and amount of compressed data stored in the buffer. This allows a substantially constant quality ratio between the compressed data from respective data compression channels and a substantially constant quality of the compressed data from an individual data compression channel.