Methods and apparatus for the stitching of images from a multi-camera array. In one embodiment, stitching is performed for a first image and a second image with an overlapping field of view by: encoding the first image to produce a first encoded image; encoding the second image to produce a second uncompressed encoded image; stitching the first image with the second image by: decoding the first encoded image to produce a decoded first image; storing the decoded first image in memory; accessing, by a stitching engine, the decoded first image from memory; accessing, by the stitching engine, the second uncompressed encoded image; stitching, by the stitching engine, the decoded first image with the accessed second uncompressed encoded image to produce a stitched image; and outputting, by the stitching engine, the stitched image.