Patent 7502415 was granted and assigned to Microsoft on March, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Techniques and tools are described for decoding video data having samples that have been scaled in the spatial domain. For example, a decoder receives a bit stream that includes coded video data for a current frame. The decoder processes at least one syntax element (e.g., sequence layer flag, frame layer flag) that indicates whether the current frame should be scaled up in value in a spatial domain. If so, then the samples for the current frame are scaled up in value in the spatial domain. As another example, for a reference frame used in motion compensation for a current frame, a decoder scales samples of the reference frame so the range of the reference frame matches the range of the current frame.