A clock buffer has a clock-in port that inputs a reference clock and an enable port that inputs a video-clock-enable signal from a video receiver. The clock buffer generates a video pixel clock signal that has pulses of the reference signal as enabled by the video-clock-enable signal. The video receiver includes a link symbol extractor, a link-to-pixel mapper, and a timing generator that work to mirror the actual pixel data rate from the active period in a blanking period and thereby recover the actual video pixel clock.