Patent ID: 8731045

Claim:
A method of encoding a portion of a current image, said method being carried out by an encoder arranged to cooperate with a decoder and comprising: an estimation of motion between fragments belonging to adjacent and separate portions of the current image portion and a plurality of candidate image portions of a previous image in order to form a first motion component, said estimation using only information considered to be available at said decoder, said information considered to be available at the decoder being information that the decoder estimates or knows has been decoded, such as information transmitted previously and for which no error message has been received or for which a positive confirmation of receipt has been received, or else information stored simultaneously in the encoder and decoder; an evaluation of a performance criterion for each candidate image portion, said evaluation using only information considered to be available at said decoder; a selection of a reference image portion from among the candidate image portions using said performance criteria, said selection using only information considered to be available at said decoder; and an insertion of encoding information such as chrominance and luminance into an output flow intended for the decoder, wherein, for an image portion, the motion estimation to form the first motion component, the evaluation of a performance criterion and the reference image portion selection are carried out in the same way for the encoding process and for a corresponding decoding process, wherein, the first motion component is not inserted into said output flow, for said at least one image portion, the motion estimation delivering several motion components, and wherein the method further includes a determination of information for reconstructing at least a second motion component and an insertion of said reconstruction information into the output flow.