METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ENCODING A VIDEO SIGNAL OF A CONTOUR OF AN OBJECT

A method for encoding a video signal of a current contour of an object based on a previous contour thereof determines a multiple number of first vertex points on the current contour and maps the first vertex points onto the previous contour to thereby provide second vertex points of said multiple number on the previous contour. After approximating the current contour based on the first vertex points to thereby provide a first approximation contour and approximating the previous contour based on the second vertex points to thereby provide a second approximated contour, the method obtains a first set of approximation errors between the current contour and the first approximated contour and a second set of approximation errors between the previous contour and the second approximated contour. The method then calculates a difference between the first and the second sets of approximation errors and encodes the difference to produce encoded data.