Method of filtering pixels in a video encoding process

Abstract

A method and apparatus, particularly suited to SIMD instruction sets, to filter streaming video information encoded under a predictive encoding algorithm specified under video encoding standards, such as MPEG 4 or H.264/AVC. The filtering operation de-blocks or removes unwanted borders in the perceived video. During the filtering process, a series of filtering mask is generated based on temporal and spatial statistics of predictive encoded video information, which is then recursively applied to the video in order to gate filtered or unfiltered video to an output channel according to coefficients of the masks. The filtering mask effectively yields a decision or rule-based map that transforms the video on a pixel-by-pixel basis thereby avoiding complex and processor-intensive decision tree logic customarily required to process individual pixels of successive macroblocks that may have different filtering requirements.