Patent ID: 8488672

Claim:
A method for encoding a macroblock, the macroblock comprising a plurality of pixel values and a plurality of sub-partition blocks, each sub-partition block comprising a subset of the plurality of pixel values, the method comprising: selecting for a plurality of subsets of the sub-partition blocks of the macroblock a prediction mode defining a prediction direction for predicting pixels for each of the sub-partition blocks of each of the subsets based on neighboring pixels; providing a plurality of mode uniformity indicators for the macroblock, each of the mode uniformity indicators indicating for a particular one of the subsets of the sub-partition blocks whether all sub-partition blocks in the particular one of the subsets macroblock are to be predicted according to the same selected prediction mode and the same prediction direction for each of the sub-partition blocks in the particular one of the subsets, wherein a first one of the plurality of mode uniformity indicators indicates whether all of the sub-partition blocks in a first one of the subsets of the sub-partition blocks are to be predicted according to a first prediction mode and a first prediction direction and wherein a second one of the plurality of mode uniformity indicators indicates whether all of the sub-partition blocks in a second one of the subsets of the sub-partition blocks are to be predicted according to a second selected prediction mode and a second prediction direction; and predicting the sub-partition blocks of each of the subsets of the macroblock according to the same prediction mode and the same prediction direction selected for each of the subsets so as to predict the plurality of pixel values of the macroblock.