Apparatus for excising (and reinserting) specific data from a compressed video data stream to reduce its transmission bandwidth

A digital compressed video signal transmission system includes a transport processor for segmenting compressed MPEG video data into transport cells for transmission. Prior to formation of the transport cells, at least a portion of the 32-bit MPEG slice start codes are excised from the compressed data. An entry pointer is generated to indicate the location of the beginning of a slice, which pointer is included in a transport cell header. In a corresponding receiver, the transport header is examined for a slice entry pointer, and if one is found, a slice start code is inserted in the transport payload data stream at the location indicated by the pointer so as to provide a signal according to the MPEG protocol.