Video compression interface

A memory comprising:

• A) a first data structure having fields of a BITMAPINFO structure and additional fields comprising:
• i) a frame latency for asynchronous compression;
• ii) an indication of frame reordering and an indication of support for asynchronous compression;
• iii) a pointer to a second data structure for specifying additional compression parameters;
• B) a third data structure comprising the first data structure and at least one additional field for specifying the colors of a video frame;
• C) a fourth data structure comprising the fields of an ICCOMPRESS structure and additional fields comprising
• i) a pointer to the third data structure for specifying the input format of the video frame;
• ii) the input and output frame numbers of the video frame;
• D) a fifth data structure comprising a field for specifying a compression frame rate;
• E) a first function to notify a video compressor that asynchronous compression will be used and to specify asynchronous compression parameters to the video compressor, the first function comprising a pointer to the fifth data structure;
• F) a second function to prepare the video compressor to compress the video frame, the second function comprising a pointer to the first data structure;
• G) a third function to cause the video compressor to compress the video frame, the third function comprising a pointer to the fourth data structure;
• and
• H) a fourth function to query the video compressor for supported compression formats, the fourth function comprising a pointer to the first data structure.

A method to compress at least one video frame asynchronously, the method comprising the steps of:

• A) specifying a frame latency for the at least one video frame;
• B) submitting the at least one video frame for asynchronous compression and specifying an input frame number;
• C) receiving an indication that compression has completed asynchronously;
• D) retrieving a compressed frame and an output frame number;
• E) terminating asynchronous compression of the at least one video frame;
• and
• F) retrieving any compressed frames which remain pending after asynchronous compression is terminated.