The invention relates to the field of video compression and, more specifically, to a
video encoding method applied to an input sequence of frames in which each frame is subdivided into blocks of arbitrary size. This method comprises, for at least a part of said blocks of the current frame, the steps of generating on a block basis motion-compensated frames, each one being obtained from each current original frame and a previous reconstructed frame, generating from said motion-compensated frames residual signals, using a so-called
matching pursuit (MP)
algorithm for decomposing each of said generated residual signals into coded dictionary functions called atoms, the other blocks of the current frame being processed by means of other coding techniques, and coding said atoms and the motion vectors determined during the motion compensation step, for generating an output coded
bitstream. According to the invention, said method is such that, when using said MP
algorithm, a specific dictionary is available at the encoding side for each block shape respectively. According to another implementation, it is also possible to use several specific dictionaries. In this second solution, if several dictionaries are available at the encoding side, a
bitstream syntax is defined for placing, at a predetermined level, flags provided to indicate which dictionary should be used and placed for example at the atom level, at the
block level, at the
macroblock level or at the picture level.