Patent attributes
Techniques are described to use a reference motion vector to reduce the amount of bits needed to encode motion vectors for inter prediction. One method includes identifying a candidate motion vector used to inter predict each of a plurality of previously coded blocks to define a plurality of candidate motion vectors, determining a distance between the previously decoded block associated with the candidate motion vector and a current block, determining a popularity value for each candidate motion vector based on a set of previously coded pixels associated with the candidate motion vector, and ranking the candidate motion vectors according to a priority value for each candidate motion vector. The priority value, based on the distance and the popularity value associated with the candidate motion vector, is used to select a reference motion vector from the candidate motion vectors that is used to encode the motion vector for the current block.