Patent ID: 8842734

Claim:
A method of decoding a video, the method comprising: extracting, from a received bitstream of an encoded video, information about a maximum size of a coding unit and split information indicating whether a coding unit of a current depth is split into coding units of a lower depth; determining, based on the extracted split information, coding units of a tree structure comprising coding units which is not split any more among coding units split from a maximum coding unit; and decoding an image including the determined coding units of the tree structure in the maximum coding unit, wherein the image is split into a plurality of maximum coding units according to the extracted information about the maximum size of the coding unit, the maximum coding unit is hierarchically split into one or more coding units of depths including at least one of a current depth and a lower depth according to the split information, when the split information indicates a split for the current depth, the coding unit of a current depth is split into four coding units of a lower depth, independently from neighboring coding units, and when the split information indicates a non-split for the lower depth, the coding unit of the lower depth is split into one or more prediction units.