1. A method for performing video decoding, comprising: receiving a stream of pictures, each picture consisting essentially of a complete field or frame having one or more slices of a plurality of macroblocks, each picture being encoded in accordance with one of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and H.264; parsing input bits of a first one of the pictures into a plurality of syntax elements of the first picture; decoding the plurality of syntax elements of the first picture into pixel values and parsing input bits of a second different one of the pictures into a plurality of syntax elements of the second picture in a parallel manner; determining whether the second picture has dependency on one or more other pictures; and if the second picture has no dependency on one or more other pictures, decoding the plurality of syntax elements of the second picture into pixel values.