Method and apparatus for recovering a pruned version of a picture in a video sequence are disclosed. The apparatus includes a divider for dividing the pruned version of the picture into a plurality of non-overlapping blocks. The apparatus also includes a metadata decoder for decoding metadata for use in recovering the pruned version of the picture. The apparatus further includes a patch library creator for creating a patch library from a reconstructed version of the picture. The patch library includes a plurality of high resolution replacement patches for replacing the one or more pruned blocks during a recovery of the pruned version of the picture. The apparatus additionally includes a search and replacement device for performing a searching process using the metadata to find a corresponding patch for a respective one of the one or more pruned blocks from among the plurality of non-overlapping blocks and replace the respective one of the one or more pruned blocks with the corresponding patch. The signature is respectively created for each of the one or more pruned blocks, and the pruned version of the picture is recovered by comparing respective distance metrics from signatures for each of the plurality of high resolution patches to signatures for each of the one or more pruned blocks, sorting the respective distance metrics to obtain a rank list for each of the one or more pruned blocks, wherein a rank number in the rank list for a particular one of the one or more pruned blocks is used to retrieve a corresponding one of the plurality of high resolution patches in the patch library to be used to replace the particular one of the one or more pruned blocks. A patch dependency graph having a plurality of nodes and a plurality of edges is used to recover the pruned version of the picture. Each of the plurality of nodes represents a respective one of the plurality of overlapping blocks, and each of the plurality of edges represents a respective dependency of at least the respective one of the plurality of overlapping blocks.