Patent ID: 8861615

Claim:
A method of coding a picture comprising multiple slices and being composed of multiple largest coding units having a selected size in terms of number of pixels, said method comprises: determining a hierarchical granularity for said picture defining a hierarchical level for slice border alignment, said hierarchical level defining a size of a smallest possible addressable coding unit at which a start of a slice in said picture can be aligned, said multiple largest coding units can be hierarchically split into multiple coding units having respective sizes that are smaller than said selected size; generating, for at least a portion of said multiple slices and based on said hierarchical granularity, address information identifying a respective first coding unit of said at least a portion of said multiple slices within said picture, wherein generating said address information comprises generating, for each slice of said multiple slices except a first slice in said picture and based on said hierarchical granularity, said address information identifying a respective first coding unit of said each slice of said multiple slices except said first slice; generating a respective coded slice representation of each slice of said multiple slices; including said respective coded slice representation and said address information in a coded picture representation of said picture; and associating said information of said hierarchical granularity to said coded picture representation.