Patent ID: 7103103

Claim:
A method of encoding uncompressed video data to form compressed video data, wherein the video data comprises a sequence of image frames, wherein at least some of the frames are encoded as nonkey frames that are each encoded with reference to i) content of a reference frame and ii) segmentation of the reference frame, the segmentation being an assignment of some or all of the pixels of the reference frame to segments based on at least one of i) color values of the pixels and ii) location of the pixels in the reference frame, the method comprising: encoding a first reference frame; segmenting the reference frame into segments; matching the segments of the reference frame to pixels of a nonkey frame; determining translations of the segments from the reference frame to the nonkey frame using results of the matching; for at least one segment that is matched from the reference frame to the nonkey frame, determining an additional kinetic information element selected from a z-order, a pixel color value offset, and a lighting change; determining residues of the segments from the reference frame to the nonkey frame after the translations and the additional kinetic information element are applied to the segments in the reference frame; encoding into the compressed video data a representation of the translations of the segments; encoding into the compressed video data a representation of the additional kinetic information element(s) for the at least one matched segment; and encoding into the compressed video data a representation of the residues of the segments.