Patent ID: 8780993

Claim:
A method of decoding a video, the method comprising: receiving and parsing a bitstream of an encoded image; determining at least one coding unit included in a maximum coding unit which has a hierarchical structure by using information that indicates the hierarchical structure, parsed from the received bitstream; determining at least one sub-unit for predicting a coding unit among the at least one coding unit, by using information about prediction units of the coding unit, parsed from the received bitstream, wherein the at least one sub-unit comprises at least two partitions obtained by splitting at least one of a height and a width of the coding unit according to one of a symmetric ratio and an asymmetric ratio; and reconstructing the image by performing decoding including motion compensation using the partitions for the at least one coding unit, using encoding information parsed from received bitstream, wherein the maximum coding unit is split hierarchically into the at least one coding unit, and the coding unit is split according to depths and independently from neighboring coding units among the at least one coding unit in the maximum coding unit.