1. A computer implemented method of processing video data formed of a series of video frames comprising: using a first video encoding process and a feature-based encoding process, processing the video frames by: encoding the video frames with the first video encoding process; processing one or more of the frames to detect one or more instances of a feature by searching the one or more frames for a region of pels having coherency and computational complexity as compared to other pels in the one or more frames; modeling variation of the feature instance relative to other instances of the feature to create a feature-based encoding of the feature instance; and comparing compression efficiency of the feature-based encoding of the feature instance relative to an encoding of the feature instance resulting from the first video encoding process.