Patent ID: 8532185

Claim:
A method of decoding a video, the method comprising: receiving and parsing a bitstream of an encoded video; extracting, from the bitstream, encoded image data of a current picture of the encoded video assigned to a maximum coding unit of the current picture, and information about a coded depth and an encoding mode according to the maximum coding unit, wherein the maximum coding unit is a coding unit of the current picture having a maximum size; and decoding the encoded image data for the maximum coding unit based on the information about the coded depth and the encoding mode for the maximum coding unit, in consideration of a raster scanning order for the maximum coding unit and a zigzag scanning order for coding units of the maximum coding unit according to depths, wherein the maximum coding unit is spatially split into at least one coding unit according to at least one depth, and as a depth deepens from an uppermost depth, the maximum coding unit is hierarchically split from the maximum coding unit corresponding to the uppermost depth to at least one minimum coding unit corresponding to a lowermost depth of the at least one depth, wherein the at least one coding unit is a deeper coding unit.