Coefficient coding harmonization in HEVC

An apparatus for an entropy decoding operation within a video decoding device, comprising:

• a decoder having a computer processor configured to decode video frames;
• and
• computer-executable instructions executable on said computer processor to execute the entropy decoding operation, wherein based on reception of encoded video frames, the computer-executable instructions are configured to:
• convert two dimensional transform units (TUs) into one dimensional TUs based on a mode dependent coefficient scan (MDCS);
• decode a last non-zero transform coefficient position;
• decode a significance map from an encoder as to whether a coefficient is zero or non-zero;
• wherein said TUs are processed during at least one of mode dependent coefficient scanning (MDCS) with TUs that are 4×4 or 8×8 horizontal or vertical subject to horizontal or vertical scanning and the remaining TUs, including the up-right diagonal 4×4 and 8×8 TUs subject to 4×4 sub-block up-right diagonal scanning;
• or utilization of multi-level significance maps for both large TUs, and 4×4 and 8×8 TUs with 4×4 sub-block up-right diagonal scans;
• and
• decode remaining non-zero transform coefficients;
• wherein said 4×4 sub-block is a coefficient group (CG), and
• wherein, during utilization of said multi-level significance maps, said computer-executable instructions are configured to decode a flag from an encoder which determines if a coefficient group is all zero or not, and select an individual significance map if the coefficient group has non-zero coefficients.