A method and a computer-readable medium containing computer program for encoding a frame of video data are presented. The frame of video data has a plurality of macro-blocks. Each of the macro-blocks includes a macro-block header having multiple elements and macro-block residue data. An element of the macro-block header is encoded based on the value of the same element of a previous macro-block header so as to reduce overall bits in the macro-block header. The element of the macro-block header is encoded by grouping the elements of the plurality of the macro-blocks.