Methods incorporating extensions to copy-above mode for palette mode coding are disclosed. In one aspect, the method includes coding a current pixel of a current block of video data in copy-previous mode via coding a previous line index. The coding of the current pixel in copy-previous mode further including identifying a number of candidate values for the previous line index, identifying a number of escape pixels in a column of pixels above the current pixel in the current block, and reducing a number of candidate values of the previous line index by the number of identified escape pixels.