A method for encoding video data in a bit depth scalable manner, wherein an enhancement layer video is predicted from a reconstructed base layer video, and wherein at least one indication is added to the data to define the process of bit depth scalability, wherein - if the indication has a first value, no bit depth inter-layer prediction is utilized; - if the indication has a second value, it specifies that bit depth inter-layer prediction based on bit-shift is utilized; and - if the indication has another than the first or second value, bit depth inter-layer prediction based on an advanced bit depth prediction is utilized, the advanced bit depth prediction comprising the following steps: - generating a transfer function suitable for mapping input color values to output color values; - applying the transfer function to a first video picture of the base layer video with a color bit-depth of M bit, wherein a transferred first video picture with a color bit-depth of M bit is obtained; - generating a difference picture or residual between the transferred first video picture and a second video picture of the enhancement layer, the second video picture having a higher color bit-depth of N bit, with N>M; and - encoding the residual, the first video picture and the parameters of the transfer function; characterised in that the advanced bit depth prediction is a smoothed histogram method, according to which the transfer function is obtained by comparing color histograms of the first and the second video pictures, for which purpose the color histogram of the first picture having 2 M bins is transformed into a smoothed color histogram having 2 N bins, and by determining a transfer function from the smoothed color histogram and the color enhancement layer histogram having 2 N bins, which transfer function defines a transfer between the values of the smoothed color histogram and the values of the color enhancement layer histogram. - if the indication has a first value, no bit depth inter-layer prediction is utilized; - if the indication has a second value, it specifies that bit depth inter-layer prediction based on bit-shift is utilized; and - if the indication has another than the first or second value, bit depth inter-layer prediction based on an advanced bit depth prediction is utilized, the advanced bit depth prediction comprising the following steps: - generating a transfer function suitable for mapping input color values to output color values; - applying the transfer function to a first video picture of the base layer video with a color bit-depth of M bit, wherein a transferred first video picture with a color bit-depth of M bit is obtained; - generating a difference picture or residual between the transferred first video picture and a second video picture of the enhancement layer, the second video picture having a higher color bit-depth of N bit, with N>M; and - encoding the residual, the first video picture and the parameters of the transfer function; characterised in that the advanced bit depth prediction is a smoothed histogram method, according to which the transfer function is obtained by comparing color histograms of the first and the second video pictures, for which purpose the color histogram of the first picture having 2 M bins is transformed into a smoothed color histogram having 2 N bins, and by determining a transfer function from the smoothed color histogram and the color enhancement layer histogram having 2 N bins, which transfer function defines a transfer between the values of the smoothed color histogram and the values of the color enhancement layer histogram.