Method and apparatus for determining the severity of corruption in a picture

An apparatus comprising:

• a decoder circuit configured to:
• receive a first packet including encoded pixels representative of a picture in a multimedia stream;
• receive a first approximate signature generated based on approximate values of pixels in a reconstructed copy of the picture;
• decode the encoded pixels;
• transmit a first signal that is generated based on a comparison of the first approximate signature and a second approximate signature generated based on approximate values of the decoded pixels,
• wherein the first signal indicates whether the first approximate signature is equal to the second approximate signature;
• replicate a second packet to replace a corrupted third packet, wherein the first packet was encoded based on the third packet, and wherein decoding the encoded pixels in the first packet comprises decoding the encoded pixels in the first packet based on encoded pixels in the second packet
• receive a second signal in response to transmitting the first signal and in response to detecting corruption of the third packet;
• and
• wherein the second signal comprises instructions to request an intra-coded picture in response to the first approximate signature differing from the second approximate signature.

An apparatus comprising:

• a decoder circuit configured to:
• receive a first packet including encoded pixels representative of a picture in a multimedia stream;
• receive a first approximate signature generated based on approximate values of pixels in a reconstructed copy of the picture;
• decode the encoded pixels;
• transmit a first signal in response to comparing the first approximate signature and a second approximate signature generated based on approximate values of the decoded pixels;
• and
• a multimedia application configured to:
• receive the first signal;
• and
• transmit, to the decoder circuit, a second signal in response to receiving the first signal and in response to corruption of a second packet,
• wherein the second signal comprises instructions to request an intra-coded picture in response to the first signal indicating that the first approximate signature differs from the second approximate signature.

An apparatus comprising:

• an encoder circuit configured to:
• encode pixels representative of a picture in a multimedia stream;
• decode the encoded pixels to generate pixels representative of a copy of the picture;
• generate a first approximate signature based on approximate values of the pixels in the copy of the picture by at least one of hashing the approximate values of the pixels or applying a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) to the approximate values of the pixels;
• and
• transmit the encoded pixels and the first approximate signature.

An apparatus comprising:

• an encoder circuit configured to:
• encode pixels representative of a picture in a multimedia stream;
• generate a first approximate signature based on approximate values of pixels in a reconstructed copy of the picture;
• transmit the encoded pixels and the first approximate signature;
• and
• receive instructions to generate an intra-coded picture in response to the first approximate signature differing from a second approximate signature generated based on approximate decoded values of the pixels.