Patent ID: 8107761

Claim:
A method for determining boundary strengths of edges in a block-based digitally encoded image, the method comprising the steps of: determining boundary strengths of left edges, top edges and internal edges of a macroblock according to encoding mode and encoding data of the macroblock, the encoding mode being either Intra Prediction or Inter Prediction; and applying deblocking operations with different strengths to edges with different boundary strength values by a deblocking process for the block-based digitally encoded image; wherein if the encoding mode of the macroblock is Inter Prediction, and none of two adjacent blocks in the macroblock has non-zero residuals and the two adjacent blocks both lie in the same motion compensation block, then setting boundary strength of the two adjacent blocks to a first strength value, and if the encoding mode of the macroblock is Intra Prediction, then the boundary strengths of the left edges of the macroblock are set to a second strength value; if both the macroblock and its Top macroblock (MB), which is the macroblock above the current macroblock, are both Frame macroblocks (MBs), which are macroblocks encoded in frame mode, then the boundary strengths of the top edges of the macroblock are set to the second strength value, otherwise the boundary strengths of the top edges of the macroblock are set to a third strength value; and the boundary strengths of the internal edges of the macroblock are all set to the third strength value.