A method, apparatus, article of manufacture, and a memory structure for encoding or decoding a sequence comprising a plurality of pictures, each of the plurality of pictures partitionable into one or more slices, each of the one or more slices processed at least in part according to a slice header. In one embodiment, all the relative syntax and function calls under the condition of slice type equal to P or B are grouped together, and syntax describing the initial value for a quantization parameter to be used in coding blocks of data and deblocking related syntax are put before this group of syntax and function calls.