Patent ID: 6980598

Claim:
A method of filtering pixels of video frames of a sequence of video frames for facilitating video encoding thereof, said method comprising: prior to MPEG compression encoding of the video frames, obtaining pixel values of the video frames of the sequence of video frames; programmably vertically filtering noise from said pixel values of said video frames prior to said MPEG compression encoding, said programmably vertically filtering comprising obtaining vertical filter coefficients for use in vertically filtering said pixel values, wherein said vertical filter coefficients comprise at least two programmable luminance filter coefficients and at least two programmable chrominance filter coefficients, and wherein the programmably vertically filtering further comprises: separating luminance components and chrominance components of said pixel values in a vertical filter buffer; vertically filtering luminance components of said pixel values using said at least two programmable luminance filter coefficients and vertically filtering chrominance components of said pixel values using said at least two programmable chrominance filter coefficients; merging filtered luminance component data and filtered chrominance component data after said vertically filtering of luminance components and said vertically filtering of chrominance components; and further comprising performing at least one of said vertically filtering luminance components of said pixel values and said vertically filtering chrominance components of said pixel values, as follows: vertically filtering luminance components of said pixel values by determining filtered luminance component data using: Lum ⁡ ( filtered ) = L 1 ⁢ Pl 1 + L 2 ⁢ Pl 2 + L 3 ⁢ Pl 3 + L 4 ⁢ Pl 4 256 where: Lum(filtered)=a filtered pixel luminance component, L 1 ,L 2 ,L 3 ,L 4 =programmable luminance filter coefficients, Pl 1 ,Pl 2 ,Pl 3 ,Pl 4 =luminance component data for vertical pixels P 1 ,P 2 ,P 3 , P 4 prior to vertical filtering; and vertically filtering chrominance components of said pixel values by determining filtered chrominance component data using: Chr ⁡ ( filtered ) = C 1 ⁢ Pc 1 + C 2 ⁢ Pc 2 + C 3 ⁢ Pc 3 + C 4 ⁢ Pc 4 + C 5 ⁢ Pc 5 256 where: Chr(filtered)=a filtered pixel chrominance component, C 1 , C 2 , C 3 , C 4 , C 5 =programmable chrominance filter coefficients, and Pc 1 , Pc 2 , Pc 3 , Pc 4 , Pc 5 =chrominance component data for vertical pixels P 1 , P 2 , P 3 , P 4 , P 5 prior to vertical filtering.