Content aware scheduling in a HEVC decoder operating on a multi-core processor platform

A method of decoding an encoded video stream on a processor having a plurality of processing cores, comprising:

• receiving the encoded video stream;
• examining the video stream to identify any macroscopic constructs present therein that support parallel processing and bit rate to determine a threshold that is used for further determining the manner of parallel processing of said video stream, wherein the threshold is derived by determining a time taken for Context Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding (CABAC) processing relative to a time taken for decoding remaining parts of the video stream;
• dividing decoding of the video stream into a plurality of decoding functions;
• scheduling the plurality of decoding functions for decoding the video stream in a dynamic manner based on availability of any macroscopic constructs that have been identified and then based on a number of bytes used to encode each block into which each picture of the video stream is partitioned among the plurality of processing cores;
• and
• dispatching each of the decoding functions to the plurality of processing cores in accordance with the scheduling.