A seamless MPEG-2 concatenation technology developed by the ATLANTIC project in which an MPEG-2 bitstream enters a Mole-equipped decoder, and the decoder not only decodes the video, but the information on how that video was first encoded (motion vectors and coding mode decisions). This “side information” or “metadata” in an information bus is synchronized to the video and sent to the Mole-equipped encoder. The encoder looks at the metadata and knows exactly how to encode the video. The video is encoded in exactly the same way (so theoretically it has only been encoded once) and maintains quality. If an opaque bug is inserted in the picture, the encoder only has to decide how the bug should be encoded (and then both the bug and the video have been theoretically encoded only once). Problems arise with transparent or translucent bugs, because the video underneath the bug must be encoded, and therefore that video will have to be encoded twice, while the surrounding video and the bug itself have only been encoded once theoretically. What Mole cannot do is make the encoding any better. Therefore, the highest quality of initial encoding is suggested.