Patent ID: 8588307

Claim:
A method of decoding mode information of a current block of an image, the method comprising: determining whether an encoding mode of the current block is identical to both a first previous encoding mode of a first previously encoded block and a second previous encoding mode of a second previously encoded block, the first previously encoded block and the second previously encoded block being consecutive; in response to determining that the encoding mode of the current block is identical to both the first previous encoding mode and the second previous encoding mode, determining that a decoding mode of the current block is identical to the first previous encoding mode and the second previous encoding mode; and in response to determining that the encoding mode of the current block is not identical to both the first previous encoding mode and the second previous encoding mode, parsing at least one of first information indicating that the encoding mode of the current block is a first encoding mode and second information indicating that the encoding mode of the current block is one of a second encoding mode and a third encoding mode, and determining a decoding mode of the current block based on the at least one of the parsed first information and the parsed second information, wherein the first encoding mode indicates that the current block is identical to a second block that is encoded prior to the current block, the current block adjacent to the second block in a slice of the image.