Patent ID: 8311110

Claim:
A method of decoding a video image, the method comprising: determining coding units of a hierarchical structure by using information about whether to divide a coding unit parsed from a received bitstream; obtaining a first predicted value of a current coding unit, among the determined coding units, by using neighboring pixels of the current coding unit; obtaining a second predicted value of each of pixels of the current coding unit located on a top border and a left border of the current coding unit by using at least one neighboring pixel adjacent to each of the pixels located on the top border and the left border of the current coding unit; and obtaining a final predicted value of the current coding unit by using the obtained first predicted value and the obtained second predicted value; the image is hierarchically split, into coding units of coded depths according to depths, from a plurality of maximum coding units according to information about a maximum size of a coding unit; a coding unit of a current depth is a rectangular data unit split from a coding unit of an upper depth; the coding unit of the current depth is split into coding units of a lower depth, independently from neighboring coding units; and the coding units of the hierarchical structure comprise encoded coding units among the coding units split from a maximum coding unit.