Frequency-Based Adaptive Interpolation Filter in Intra Prediction

This paper proposes a method to improve the fractional interpolation of reference samples in the Versatile Video Coding (VVC) intra prediction. The proposed method uses additional interpolation filters which use more integer-positioned reference samples for prediction according to the frequency information of the reference samples. In VVC, a 4-tap Discrete Cosine Transform-based interpolation filter (DCT-IF) and 4-tap Smoothing interpolation filter (SIF) are alternatively performed on the block size and block directional prediction mode for reference sample interpolation. This paper uses four alternative interpolation filters such as 8-tap/4-tap DCT-IFs, and 4-tap/8-tap SIFs and an interpolation filter selection method using a high-frequency ratio calculated from one-dimensional (1D) transform of the reference samples are proposed. The proposed frequency-based Adaptive Filter allows to achieve the overall Bjontegaard Delta (BD) rate gains of -0.16%, -0.13%, and -0.09% for Y, Cb, and Cr components, respectively, compared with VVC.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a method to enhance the fractional interpolation of reference samples in VVC intra prediction. The method utilizes additional interpolation filters that use integer-positioned reference samples based on their frequency information. Four alternative interpolation filters, including 8-tap/4-tap DCT-IFs and 4-tap/8-tap SIFs, are introduced along with an interpolation filter selection method based on the high-frequency ratio calculated from the one-dimensional transform of the reference samples. The proposed frequency-based Adaptive Filter achieves overall Bjontegaard Delta (BD) rate gains of -0.16%, -0.13%, and -0.09% for Y, Cb, and Cr components, respectively, compared with VVC.