Variable block-based deblocking filter for H.264/AVC on low-end and low-bit rates terminals

H.264/AVC supports variable block motion compensation, multiple reference frames, 1/4-pixel motion vector accuracy, and in-loop deblocking filter, compared with previous video coding standards. While these coding techniques are major functions for video compression improvement, they lead to high computational complexity at the same time. For the H.264 video coding techniques to be actually applied on low-end/low-bit rates terminals more extensively, it is essential to improve the coding efficiency. Currently the H.264 deblocking filter, which can improve the subjective quality of video, is hardly used on low-end terminals due to computational complexity.In this paper, we propose an enhanced method of deblocking filter that efficiently reduces the blocking artifacts occurring during the low-bit rates video coding. In the ‘variable block-based deblocking filter (VBDF)’ proposed in this paper, the temporal and spatial characteristics of moving pictures are extracted using the variable block-size information of motion compensation, the filter mode is classified into four different modes according to the moving-picture characteristics, and the adaptive filtering is executed in the separate modes. The proposed VBDF can reduce the blocking artifacts, prevent excessive blurring effects, and achieve about 30–40% computational speedup at about the same PSNR compared with the existing methods.