Patent ID: 7369709

Claim:
A method of transform coding/decoding digital media content, comprising: transform coding/decoding blocks of the digital media content; signaling the overlap filter mode from encoder to decoder of the digital media content on a per macroblock basis, wherein the overlap mode signaling is a per macroblock overlap flag; and conditionally applying an overlap filter to a subset of edges between adjacent transform blocks of the digital media content before/after transform coding/decoding on a spatially varying basis; wherein conditionally applying an overlap filter comprises: switching between a plurality of overlap filter modes applied to edges between adjacent transform blocks of the digital media content on the spatially varying basis having macroblock-level granularity; applying the overlap filter to intra-macroblock transform block edges of a macroblock whose overlap flag signals to apply the overlap filter; and applying the overlap filter to transform block edges between adjacent macroblocks both of whose overlap flags signal to apply the overlap filter.