A Temporal Pre-Filter For Video Coding Based On Bilateral Filtering

This paper presents a motion compensated temporal bilateral denoising pre-filter for video coding. The filtering process is applied before encoding and uses the two closest preceding pictures, the two closest succeeding pictures, the position of the current picture in the Group of Pictures (GOP) hierarchy and the value of the Quantization Parameter (QP) to filter a current picture. The filter is designed for both random-access and low-delay configurations, and succeeding pictures are not used in low-delay configurations. The filter is reported to achieve an average luma BD-rate of -3.9% relative to the VTM-7.0 video encoder in random-access configuration. The subjective quality compared to VTM-7.0 is reported as similar or better at lower encoded bit rate.