Patent ID: 6993078

Claim:
A method of encoding macroblocks of at least one frame of a sequence of video frames, the method comprising: encoding macroblocks of a frame of a sequence of video frames, said encoding comprising for at least one macroblock of the frame: (i) deciding to code the at least one macroblock as a non-intra macroblock; (ii) switching the coding decision for the at least one macroblock from non-intra to skip when an absolute prediction error for the at least one macroblock is less than a prediction error threshold and a magnitude of a motion vector for the at least one macroblock is less than a defined motion vector threshold, the defined motion vector threshold being greater than zero; and (iii) wherein the absolute prediction error for the at least one macroblock comprises an absolute sum component and a maximum difference component for both luminance data and chrominance data of the at least one macroblock, and wherein the prediction error threshold comprises multiple thresholds, a first threshold (TH 1 ) comprising a threshold for an absolute luminance summation component (LUM sum ) a second threshold (TH 2 ) comprising a threshold for an absolute chrominance summation component (CHR sum ), a third threshold (TH 3 ) comprising a threshold for a maximum luminance difference value (LUMM max diff ), and a forth threshold (TH 4 ) comprising a threshold for a maximum chrominance difference value (CHR max diff ), of the at least one macroblock compared with a reference macroblock.