Patent ID: 7327785

Claim:
A method for noise prevention, comprising: coding a macroblock composed of a number of sub blocks representing a squared part of the video picture, said coding including predicting pixel values of the macroblock and one of transforming one of the pixel values and pixel prediction values and quantifying resulting transformation coefficients; executing a conditional uniformity test throughout the macroblock; and selecting, after said executing, intra prediction of pixel values in the macroblock if the conditional uniformity test indicates that a substantially subjective quantization generated noise due to movements in the video picture is likely to occur in a corresponding decoded version of the macroblock, or selecting, after said executing, inter prediction of pixel values in the macroblock if the conditional uniformity test indicates that no substantially subjective quantization generated noise due to movements in the video picture is likely to occur in a corresponding decoded version of the macroblock, wherein said step of executing includes, indicating that substantially subjective quantization generated noise is likely to occur when the following criteria are fulfilled: the macroblock is about to be defined as “skipped,” a previous corresponding macroblock was not defined as “skipped,” and the pixel values are substantially uniform whereas the prediction values are substantially non-uniform.