The pseudo code for the transform unit 1200 is illustrated with darkened lines 1211-1214, which are added for the purpose of specifying the additional chroma QP offsets. Specifically, at line 1211, the parameter “additional_chroma_qp_offset” is used to indicate whether additional chroma information is allowed. The variable “IsCrCuQpOffsetCoded” is used to indicate whether it is necessary to specify (or receive) chroma QP offset information at the transform unit 1200. If the chroma QP offset values for the QG 821 have already been coded, there is no need to specify chroma QP offset values again. If the QG 821 has not already coded a set of chroma QP offset values (i.e., if the variable “IsCrCuQpOffsetCoded” is 0), the transform unit 1200 at lines 1212 specifies an index “cu_chroma_qp_offset_table_index” for selecting an entry from the table 890. For this example, the index value is set to select the chroma QP offset values contained in entry C (893) of the table 890.