Patent ID: 8625670

Claim:
A method of encoding an image, the method comprising: performing motion estimation on a current block to be encoded and determining a prediction mode of the current block; when the determined prediction mode of the current block is a skip mode, determining whether prediction modes of neighboring blocks of the current block are skip modes; when it is determined that the prediction modes of the neighboring blocks of the current block are skip modes, encoding a residual that is a difference value between the current block and a prediction block of the current block; and adding the residual of the current block and a mode information indicating that the prediction mode of the current block is the skip mode to a bit stream when the prediction mode of the current block is a skip mode and the prediction modes of the neighbor blocks of the current block are skip modes, and adding only the mode information indicating that the prediction mode of the current block is the skip mode to the bit stream when the prediction mode of the current block is the skip mode and the prediction modes of the neighbor blocks of the current block are not skip modes.