Patent ID: 7181072

Claim:
A method comprising: analyzing each of a plurality of blocks of a video frame to determine whether inter compression or predictive intra compression results in compression desired for the block; selecting, for each of the plurality of blocks, the one of inter compression and predictive intra compression that results in the compression desired for the block, wherein predictive intra compression is selected for at least one block of the plurality of blocks, and for each of the at least one block for which predictive intra compression is selected, encoding the block using intra-frame spatial prediction of pixel values, including: obtaining one or more pixel values for spatial prediction of pixel values of the block, wherein the one or more obtained pixel values are from spatially adjacent pixels, wherein: if the block is the top left block of the video frame, the one or more obtained pixel values consist of a gray value, otherwise, if the block is in the top row of the video frame, the spatially adjacent pixels consist of pixels immediately left of the block, otherwise, if the block is in the left column of the video frame, the spatially adjacent pixels consist of pixels immediately above the block, otherwise, the spatially adjacent pixels consist of the pixels immediately left of the block and the pixels immediately above the block; predicting the pixel values of the block from the one or more obtained pixel values, and encoding a residual for the block using the predicted pixel values.