Methods and systems for reducing blocking artifacts with reduced complexity for spatially-scalable video coding

Abstract

A method for characterizing of a block boundary between neighboring blocks when at least one of said neighboring blocks is encoded using inter-layer texture prediction (I_BL) including characterizing the block boundary with a first boundary strength indicator when a luma sample from one of the neighboring blocks is encoded using an intra-prediction mode other than the I_BL characterizing the block boundary with a second boundary strength indicator when no luma sample from the neighboring blocks has intra-prediction mode encoding other than the I_BL, and any of the neighboring blocks and blocks from which the neighboring blocks are predicted have non-zero transform coefficients or characterizing the block boundary with a third boundary strength indicator when no luma sample from the neighboring blocks is encoded using an intra-prediction mode other than the I_BL and all of the neighboring blocks and blocks from which the neighboring blocks are predicted have no transform coefficients.

1 . A method for characterization of a block boundary between neighboring blocks within a spatial scalability enhancement layer wherein at least one of said neighboring blocks is encoded using inter-layer texture prediction (I_BL), said method comprising:
 a) characterizing said block boundary with a first boundary strength indicator when a luma sample from one of said neighboring blocks is encoded using an intra-prediction mode other than said I_BL mode;   b) characterizing said block boundary with a second boundary strength indicator when,
 i) no luma sample from each of said neighboring blocks is encoded using an intra-prediction mode other than said I_BL mode; and 
 ii) any of said neighboring blocks and blocks from which said neighboring blocks are predicted have non-zero transform coefficients; 
   c) characterizing said block boundary with a third boundary strength indicator when,
 i) no luma sample from each of said neighboring blocks is encoded using an intra-prediction mode other than said I_BL mode; and 
 ii) all of said neighboring blocks and blocks from which said neighboring blocks are predicted have no transform coefficients. 
   
     
     
         2 . A method as described in  claim 1  wherein said first boundary strength indicator triggers more aggressive smoothing than said second boundary strength indicator, and said second boundary strength indicator triggers more aggressive smoothing than said third boundary strength indicator when applying a deblocking filter to said block boundary.