Investigating the Adaptive Loop Filter in Next Generation Video Coding

Abstract: Current trends on video technologies and services are demanding higher bit rates, highervideo resolutions and better video qualities. This issue results in the need of a new generationof video coding techniques to increase the quality and compression rates of previous standards.Since the release of HEVC, ITU-T VCEG and ISO/IEC MPEG have been studying the potentialneed for standardization of future video coding technologies with a compression capability thatsignificantly exceeds the ones from current standards. These new e↵orts of standardization andcompression enhancements are being implemented and evaluated over a software test modelknown under the name of Joint Exploration Model (JEM). One of the blocks being explored inJEM is an Adaptive Loop Filter (ALF) at the end of each frame’s processing flow. ALF aimsto minimize the error between original pixels and decoded pixels using Wiener-based adaptivefilter coefficients, reporting, in its JEM’s implementation, improvements of around a 1% in theBD MS-SSIM rate. A lot of e↵orts have been devoted on improving this block over the pastyears. However, current ALF implementations do not consider the potential use of adaptive QPalgorithms at the encoder. Adaptive QP algorithms enable the use of di↵erent quality levels forthe coding of di↵erent parts of a frame to enhance its subjective quality.In this thesis, we explore potential improvements over di↵erent dimensions of JEM’s AdaptiveLoop Filter block considering the potential use of adaptive QP algorithms. In the document, weexplore a great gamut of modification over ALF processing stages, being the ones with betterresults (i) a QP-aware implementation of ALF were the filter coefficients estimation, the internalRD-optimization and the CU-level flag decision process are optimized for the use of adaptiveQP, (ii) the optimization of ALF’s standard block activity classification stage through the useof CU-level information given by the di↵erent QPs used in a frame, and (iii) the optimizationof ALF’s standard block activity classification stage in B-frames through the application of acorrection weight on coded, i.e. not predicted, blocks of B-frames. These ALF modificationscombined obtained improvements of a 0.419% on average for the BD MS-SSIM rate in the lumachannel, showing each modification individual improvements of a 0.252%, 0.085% and 0.082%,respectively. Thus, we concluded the importance of optimizing ALF for the potential use ofadaptive-QP algorithms in the encoder, and the benefits of considering CU-level and frame-levelmetrics in ALF’s block classification stage.