Low-complexity high-quality adaptive deblocking filter for H.264/AVC system

Blocking artifacts always appear on the reconstructed image, particularly in a low bit-rate video coding system. This paper presents an adaptive offset method to improve image quality for H.264 decoding. First, the histogram statistic is used to analyze the correlation between the offset and the filtering performance. The best filtering performance can mostly be found at the position of three offsets. Second, the best offset can be searched for with the minimum SAE (Summation of Absolute Error) among the three candidates. This algorithm can not only keep low computations, but it can also obtain good filtering quality. The average performance can be improved about 0.25 to 0.45 dB (decibels) higher than the original H.264 deblocking filter. The blocky effect on the decoding image can be smoothed in vision.

► First, the histogram statistic is used to analyze the correlation between the offset and the filtering performance.
► The best filtering performance can mostly be found at the position of three offsets.
► Second, the best offset can be searched for with the minimum SAE (Summation of Absolute Error) among the three candidates.