Video codec technologies can include techniques known as intra coding. In intra coding, sample values are represented without reference to samples or other data from previously reconstructed reference pictures. In some video codecs, a picture is spatially subdivided into blocks of samples. When all blocks of samples are coded in intra mode, that picture can be referred to as an intra picture. Intra pictures and their derivatives such as independent decoder refresh pictures, can be used to reset the decoder state and can, therefore, be used as the first picture in a coded video bitstream and a video session, or as a still image. The samples of a block after intra prediction can then be subject to a transform into frequency domain, and the transform coefficients so generated can be quantized before entropy coding. Intra prediction represents a technique that minimizes sample values in the pre-transform domain. In some cases, the smaller the DC value after a transform is, and the smaller the AC coefficients are, the fewer the bits that are required at a given quantization step size to represent the block after entropy coding.
Traditional intra coding such as that known from, for example, MPEG-2 generation coding technologies, does not use intra prediction. However, some newer video compression technologies include techniques that attempt coding/decoding of blocks based on, for example, surrounding sample data and/or metadata that are obtained during the encoding and/or decoding of spatially neighboring, and that precede in decoding order the blocks of data being intra coded or decoded. Such techniques are henceforth called “intra prediction” techniques. Note that in at least some cases, intra prediction uses reference data only from the current picture under reconstruction and not from other reference pictures.