Harmonic, Inc.

Xavier Besnard

Michel Jouan

Benoit Guerin

Frederic Pasquier

Creating a sub-titles stream or file composed of sub-titles elements. For each sub-titles element in said sub-titles elements, a sub-titles element is inserted into the sub-titles stream or file, at least one end-of-block condition related to a mode of presentation of sub-titles is verified, and a datum representative of an end of a block according to the mode of presentation of sub-titles is inserted into the sub-titles stream or file upon satisfying said at least one end-of-block condition. A sub-titles stream or file may be presented on a terminal of a user by selecting on the terminal a mode of presentation of sub-titles, reading a sub-titles block associated with the mode of presentation in the stream or file, and presenting on the terminal the at least one sub-titles block according to the mode of presentation.

Controlling modes of sub-title presentation

Applying a presentation timestamp to an element of a sequence of sub-titles. A minimum presentation timestamp Tof an element of a sequence of sub-titles N is initialized. The presentation timestamp T(N) of the new element of a sub-title sequence N is compared with the minimum presentation timestamp for sub-titles T. The minimum presentation timestamp for sub-titles Tis applied to the element of a sequence of sub-titles N if the presentation timestamp T(N) of the new sub-titles element is prior to the minimum presentation timestamp for sub-titles T. The minimum presentation timestamp for sub-titles Tfor an element of a sequence of sub-titles N+1 is calculated as a timestamp posterior to the presentation timestamp T(N) of the new sub-titles element.

Controlling speed of the display of sub-titles

A video encoder unit receives a video signal to encode along with auxiliary services such as audio streams and/or data streams. While the auxiliary streams are allotted a fixed bandwidth, the video encoder determines a required video bandwidth, which must be allocated in response to the request by a central allocator. Where economies are made in the auxiliary services for example by transmitting stereo audio instead of surround sound for example, the bandwidth requested from the central allocator is inflated by an amount corresponding to a proportion of the economized bandwidth. The extra bandwidth allocated on this basis may then be used for improving the quality of video encoding, and/or reserved for the transmission of asynchronous data.

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Acigne, France

Xavier Besnard