Active techniques for real-time video transmission and playback

There are many different types of video coding standards which can only be played with specific decoders. The lack of a decoder requires a user to download and install the proper decoder in order to decode a particular video stream. This however may not be preferable for real-time applications due to real-time constraint. We propose active techniques to dynamically inject video coding software into the transmitted video packets so that users are capable of playing video encoded in any format without having the decoding software pre-installed. The proposed techniques encapsulate the encoded video stream along with the appropriate video decoding software into active packets, and transmit the active packets to the receiving terminal. The receiver then only needs to extract the code from the active packets to get the software to decode the encoded video. The process of creating and extracting active packets is referred as active activation. Depending upon the nature of the video stream, there are different active techniques to encapsulate and restore the video stream. This paper details these active techniques.