A method and apparatus for deriving a temporal motion vector predictor (MVP) are disclosed. The MVP is derived for a current block of a current picture in Inter, or Merge, or Skip mode based on co-located reference blocks of a co-located block and a flag is used to indicate the co-located picture. More than one co-located reference blocks can be used to derive the temporal MVP and the co-located reference blocks can be selected from the co-located block as well as neighboring blocks of the co-located block. A search set comprises search motion vectors associated with the co-located reference block(s) is formed. The search motion vector (MV) corresponding to the co-located reference block in the same reference list is searched before the search MV in a different reference list. Various schemes to accommodate implicit method of deriving co-located picture are also disclosed.