Patent ID: 8428123

Claim:
A method of identifying a partition configuration of a pixel group in a video picture, the method comprising: receiving the pixel group comprising a set of partitions, each partition comprising a plurality of pixels, the pixel group comprising information that identifies position and dimensions for each partition of the pixel group; identifying a partition configuration of the pixel group based on said information, wherein the partition configuration identifies a manner in which the pixel group is partitioned into a set of partitions from a plurality of unique candidate combinations of partitions, each unique candidate combination of partitions specifying a set of partitions, wherein no candidate combination of partitions specifies a set of partitions that is identical to a set of partitions specified by another candidate combination of partitions; specifying a partition configuration value for the pixel group, wherein the partition configuration value uniquely identifies the partition configuration of the pixel group as comprising a particular combination of partitions from the plurality of unique candidate combinations of partitions; and using the partition configuration value in conjunction with a partition configuration look up table to decode the pixel group, wherein each partition in a specified set has a position and dimensions relative to the pixel group, wherein two candidate combinations of partitions are not identical to each other when one candidate combination of partitions specifies a partition with at least one of a particular position and a particular dimension that the other candidate combination of partitions does not specify.