US Patent 6920181 Method for synchronizing audio and video streams

A method for synchronizing an audio stream with a variable bit rate video stream is performed by sampling a plurality of markers in the video stream to obtain and store a time stamp and a memory stamp for each marker. A user enters a selected time position for the video stream, and a video byte location is found by reviewing the stored values of the time stamps and the memory stamps. An audio byte location is calculated using the selected time position, the total file size of the audio stream, and the total amount of time required to play the audio stream. To play the audio and video streams synchronously, the audio stream is started from the audio byte location, while the video stream is concurrently started from the video byte location.