Embodiments of the invention relates to an apparatus for associating a video block partitioning pattern to a video coding block, wherein the apparatus comprises: an obtainer adapted to obtain values of a set of segmentation mask samples, wherein each segmentation sample of the set of segmentation mask samples represents a different position in a segmentation mask adapted to define video coding block partitions of the video coding block; a selector adapted to select a video block partitioning pattern from a predetermined group of video block partitioning patterns based on the values of segmentation mask samples of the set of segmentation mask samples; and an associator adapted to associate the selected video block partitioning pattern to the video coding block.