Patent ID: 8189676

Claim:
A method for encoding a frame of video data, which comprises a plurality of macro-blocks (MBs), each of which includes a MB header having multiple elements and MB residue data, comprising: encoding an element of the MB header, said encoding based on a value of the same element of a previous MB header so as to reduce overall bits in the MB header, the method further comprising: determining whether i-th MB is a non-skipped MB within the frame; determining whether i is zero, if i-th MB is a non-skipped MB within the frame; encoding a current value of an element of the MB header as normal according to a standardized entropy encoding scheme, if i is zero; determining whether said current value of the element of the MB header is zero, if i is not zero; and determining whether a previous value of the element is zero, if the current value of the element of the MB header is zero and i is not zero.