Programmable filter for removing stuffing bits from an MPEG-2 bit-stream

An MPEG-2 video decoder which identifies and removes stuffing data from an MPEG-2 bit-stream before storing the bit-stream into the VBV buffer of the decoder. The decoder monitors the MPEG-2 bit-stream for successive groups of zero-valued bytes. When a sequence of successive of zero-valued bytes is encountered that is greater than a programmed maximum length the decoder identifies the sequence as stuffing data and inhibits any further zero-valued bytes from being passed until the next non-zero valued byte is encountered. The decoder specifies two maximum length values, one for the number of stuffing bytes which may precede a Slice start code and the other for the number of stuffing bytes which may precede a non-Slice code. These values may be changed during the decoding operation by a microprocessor.