Patent Document ID: 20110142136
Application ID: 12635383
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A unified loop filter for video coding of an incoming signal, comprising: a pixel determining unit which determines the type of a pixel based on context characteristics of the pixel to be filtered; a similarity transforming unit which transforms a nonlinear image filtering portion into a nonlinear similarity-ordered statistics image filtering portion for filtering a reconstructed signal from the output of the encoder or decoder; and an integrating unit which integrates the nonlinear similarity-ordered statistics image filtering portion generated by the similarity transforming unit with a linear image filtering portion such that the reconstructed signal which is filtered by the linear image filtering portion is also filtered by the nonlinear similarity-ordered statistics image filtering portion; wherein the linear image filtering portion improves the objective quality of the reconstructed signal and the nonlinear similarity-ordered statistics image filtering portion improves the subjective quality of the reconstructed signal.