The H.264 standard has introduced a new coding method for intra-coded pictures, which is named “intra prediction”. The basic idea of intra prediction is to predict a block using reconstructed neighbour pixels. Thus, only the residual information needs to be encoded. Scalable video coding adds some scalable extension to H.264, in terms of spatial, temporal and SNR scalability. An improved encoding method for scalable video comprises generating from a video picture a first and a second picture with higher resolution than the first picture, wherein each macroblock in the first picture has a plurality of corresponding macroblocks in the second picture, intra-coding the first picture on macroblock level, wherein for each macroblock a prediction direction is determined, generating a first residual picture, intra-coding the second picture on macroblock level, wherein for each macroblock the prediction direction of the corresponding macroblock of the first picture is reused, and generating a second residual picture.