Content-adaptive deblocking for high efficiency video coding

In this paper, a content-adaptive deblocking method is proposed to improve the visual quality of block-based DCT compressed videos. We find that the edge information obtained through the global orientation energy edge detection (OEED) on an initially deblocked image provides a robust partition of local directional features (LDFs). Based on this partition, for the directional featured region, we design corresponding filter orientation and thresholds to best preserve image details while reducing blocking artifacts; for the consecutive non-featured region, we impose extra smoothing to suppress the visually severe blocking artifacts. Experimental results demonstrate that our method effectively improves the visual quality while well maintaining the objective fidelity of block-based DCT compressed videos, compared with the H.264/AVC deblocking method and other existing directional deblocking methods. & 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.