Optimization Of The Deblocking Filter In H.264 Codec For Real Time Implementation

Blocking artifacts are visible in the decoded frames of most video coding standards at low bit rate coding. Latest video coding standard H.264/AVC uses an in-loop deblocking filter to remove the blocking artifacts. The main drawback of this filter is its high implementation complexity. In this paper, we propose an in-loop deblocking filter to remove the blocking artifacts. In the proposed method, the maximum and minimum values among the six pixels across an edge are computed to decide whether the pixels of the block should be filtered or not. For intra frames, again the block is classified as smooth or mildly textured region. Depending on the classification of the block, the appropriate filter is applied to that block. The main advantage of the proposed method is its low complexity compared to JM 9.8 (H.264 software). A performance comparison of the proposed method and the current method is presented