An apparatus comprising a first processing circuit and a second processing circuit. The first processing circuit may be configured to generate (i) one or more prediction samples and (ii) a plurality of macroblocks, in response to each frame of an input video signal. The second processing circuit may be configured to (i) select one or more reference indices for each of the macroblocks from one or more sets of reference indices and (ii) generate said one or more prediction samples in response to said selected reference indices. Each of the selected reference indices is generally determined based upon minimum and maximum values for each of the one or more sets of reference indices.