KR100299485B1 - Noise removal method for motion picture encoding - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: A noise removal method for motion picture encoding is provided to eliminate noise without generating blocking phenomenon and to improve picture quality. CONSTITUTION: A differential signal between the current input video signal having noise and a previous signal from which noise was removed is obtained. A pure signal component having no noise is extracted from the differential signal. Variable gain control is carried out for the differential signal to reduce noise component. The extracted signal is added to the signal component having reduced noise component to remove noise, and noise filtering is performed to recover deteriorated resolution.

Description

Noise Reduction Method for Video Coding

The present invention relates to a noise removing method for video encoding, and more particularly, by extracting a noise-filtered signal component from an input video signal including noise in advance and controlling only a gain on a gain control path represented by 1-a. The present invention relates to a noise removing method for video encoding that enables noise filtering to be performed without generating a blocking phenomenon.

Background Art [0002] Noise removal, for example, in an MPEG2 video encoder as a video encoder, relies on gain control on a signal path represented by 1-a as shown in FIG.

FIG. 1 is a video encoder using a conventional noise reduction method, and includes a subtractor 101 for extracting an error signal of an input video signal processed in units of blocks, and 1-a (a) with respect to an output signal of the subtractor 101. FIG. A gain controller 102 for gain control of gain), a DCT / quantizer 103 for performing DCT conversion and quantization of the gain controlled signal, and an IQ / IDCT for inverting the DCT and quantized signal. A transform unit 104, an adder 105 for adding and outputting the inverse transformed signal and the output of the motion estimation compensator 107, a memory 106 for storing the added signal, and the memory 106 A motion estimation compensator 107 for performing motion estimation and compensation on an output signal of the output signal, and an output unit (VLC / FIFO) 108 for converting the DCT and the quantized signal into a bitstream and outputting the bitstream. The operation is as follows.

The input signal g (i, j, k) containing noise (i, j is an image processing unit two-dimensional coordinate on a frame, k is time axis information corresponding to i, j on a time axis frame), and a noise component ( It is regarded as the sum of n (i, j, k)) and the signal component f (i, j, k).

So in this encoder f (i, j, k) = f (i, j, k-1) + (1-a) {g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1)} Perform noise reduction in the method of.

That is, the difference value is obtained by subtracting the pixel f (i, j, k-1) of the previous frame from the pixel g (i, j, k) of the current frame, and the gain value (a) according to the difference value. In this case, when the difference between the pixel value of the current frame and the previous frame is large, noise removal is performed by reducing the noise component by increasing the gain (a).

The input signal g (i, j, k) is subtracted from the pixel f (i, j, k-1) of the previous frame by the subtractor 101 and input to the gain controller 201, and the magnitude of the difference value is reduced. Therefore, the gain (a) is increased or decreased to reduce the noise, and switching control is performed whether or not to perform gain control according to the intra / inter mode.

The signal whose gain is controlled and the noise is reduced is input to the DCT / quantization unit 103, and converted into frequency information by Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and quantization, and the quantized signal is converted into IQ / IDCT conversion unit 104. Inverse quantization and inverse DCT conversion are input into the memory 106 through the adder 105.

The memorized signal is output by the motion estimation compensator 107 after motion estimation and compensation is performed, and the output unit 108 removes noise and quantizes the quantized signal (VLC: Variable Length Coding). And a FIFO memory to output a bitstream.

Since the video encoder using the conventional noise removal method performs noise filtering only in the inter mode, the noise remains in the unfiltered path. Also, since only one pixel is used, the noise removal is incomplete and furthermore. Increase the blocking effect.

2 is a view for explaining such a blocking phenomenon.

As shown in FIG. 2A, since motion estimation compensation is performed on a block basis with respect to the original image, a discontinuous point 201 is generated at a block boundary point with the predicted image.

That is, an error signal (mc error image) corresponding to the difference between the input signal including noise and the predicted signal as shown in FIG. 2 (b) is obtained through the gain control of 1-a as shown in FIG. Even if it is removed, the filtered signal as shown in FIG. 2 (d) still has discontinuities 202 at the boundary points between adjacent blocks, resulting in deterioration in image quality due to blocking at the block boundary points.

In the conventional noise elimination method and the video encoder using the same, the noise elimination performance is closely related to the motion estimation / compensation operation.

In other words, to effectively remove noise, g (i, j, k) -g (i-dx, j-dx, k-1) = n (i, j, k) -n (i-dx, j-dx, The displacement (dx, dy) that satisfies f (i, j, k) = f (i-dx, j-dx, k-1) so as to be k-1) must be accurately found in each pixel unit.

However, since the MPEG2 video encoder finds displacements (dx, dy) in blocks, it is impossible to guarantee accurate displacements in pixels. Therefore, g (i, j, k) -g (i-dx, j-dx, k -1) includes a large amount of signal components in addition to the noise component, and the blocking effect / deterioration of image quality is inevitably caused by the discontinuous point between blocks in the noise filtered image in the form of controlling this through the gain control of 1-a. Of course, even pure signal components are reduced.

The present invention extracts the maximum signal component as long as it can determine that it is a pure signal component with respect to the input signal that contains noise, and obtains only the remaining signal with a gain constant (a) of the gain control path of 1-a. The present invention provides a noise removal method for video encoding that enables noise removal to be performed without generating blocking.

In addition, the present invention provides a video encoding to effectively remove noise even when there is a sudden signal change by considering a relationship with adjacent pixels of pixels to remove noise by giving a predetermined weight when the pure signal component is extracted. Provides a method for removing noise for

1 is a block diagram of an MPEG2 video encoder to which a conventional noise removing method is applied.

2 is a diagram for explaining a blocking effect in a conventional noise removing method.

3 is a block diagram of a first embodiment of a video encoder to which the noise removing method of the present invention is applied;

Figure 4 is a waveform diagram for explaining the noise removing method of the present invention

5 is a block diagram of a second embodiment of a video encoder to which the noise removing method of the present invention is applied.

3 illustrates a signal extracting unit 300 for extracting a signal component from which noise is removed from an input signal including noise, and an error signal between an input signal and a signal component of a previous frame. A subtractor 302, a gain controller 303, and an adder 304 constituting a noise elimination operation and a gain control path with the extraction information of the signal extraction unit, and a DCT for performing DCT conversion and quantization of the operation and gain controlled signal. / Quantizer 305, an IQ / IDCT converter 306 for inversely transforming the DCT and quantized signal, and an adder 307 for adding and outputting the outputs of the inverse transformed signal and the motion estimation compensator 309. And a memory 308 for storing the added signal, a motion estimation compensator 309 for performing motion estimation and compensation on the output signal of the memory 308, and a bitstream of the DCT and the quantized signal. Convert to output Consists of one output unit (VLC / FIFO) (310), the operation is performed in the following sequence of operations performed procedure.

f (i, j, k) = f (i, j, k-1) + (1-a) {{g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1)}-L ( g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1))} + L (g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1)), meaning that;

The difference between the input signal g (i, j, k) of the current frame including the noise and the prediction signal f (i, j, k-1) of the previous frame k-1 is obtained as an error signal. Extracting a signal component by extracting a signal preserving maximum component to be determined as a signal with respect to the error signal, and gain of 1-a with respect to a difference value between the extracted signal component and the error signal. Performing control to remove noise components through variable gain control corresponding to the level of the difference between the signal and the noise; adding the extracted signal components to the signal from which the noise components have been removed; This is done in order to recover the reduced resolution.

The noise removing operation for video encoding according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIG. 4 as follows.

As shown in FIG. 4A, an input signal original image g (i, j, k) is input to the subtractor 301.

The subtractor 301 subtracts this input signal g (i, j, k) and the predicted signal f (i, j, k-1)-the output signal of the motion estimation compensator 309. Obtain and output an error signal (motion cmpensation error image) as shown in 4 (b).

The signal extracting unit 300 extracts the maximum component to be determined as a pure signal without noise as a 'signal component' and gives a predetermined weight L to the error signal.

As such, the method of extracting only signal components from an input signal including noise is given by a function expressed by L (). Specifically,

1. A method of taking the average value of error signals in blocks;

2. a low pass filtering method pixel by pixel;

3. Only the signal components are extracted in three ways, taking into account the sudden displacement of adjacent pixels in pixel units.

The method of taking the average value in units of blocks performs the simplest configuration and calculation. The method of performing low pass filtering in units of pixels is more complicated than the method of taking average values, but the pixels are simpler and less computationally than the method of taking adaptive weighted average values. It is possible to filter the noise in units, and the method of taking the adaptive weighted average value is complicated to construct and requires a large amount of calculation. However, when there is a sudden displacement of the pixel, the method of reducing the weight is the best. Can be secured.

The average value is calculated in block units by simply accumulating the difference values for g (i, j, k) and f (i, j, k-1) and dividing them by the block size.

The low-pass filtering method in pixel units is weighted according to the positions i and j for the difference between g (i, j, k) and f (i, j, k-1), and the pixels to be filtered are selected. It is obtained simply by accumulating as much as the width (-W, + W) with adjacent pixels as a reference.

The method of obtaining the adaptive weighted average on a pixel basis is also the same as the low pass filtering on a pixel basis. In this case, the amplitude of the noise is considered in consideration of the amplitude of the noise and the displacement of the pixels in the front and rear positions with respect to the pixel to be filtered. Based on the result of accumulating between -W and + W, the difference between the displacement of the and the adjacent pixels is large. If the difference is large, the weight is reduced and if it is small, the weight is increased.

The signal component L (g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1)) obtained as shown in FIG. 4 (c) is applied to the noise filtering operation and gain control and the signal after performing this process. It is added as a pure signal component to the preserved signal.

That is, the subtractor 302 uses the error signals g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1) and L (g (i, j, k) -f extracted from the pure signal components. The difference value of (i, j, k-1)) is calculated and output, and the gain controller 303 uses the variable control of gain (a) according to the magnitude of the difference value with respect to the difference value (d) in FIG. Outputs a gain controlled signal filtered by temporal filtering.

The above process results in a noise filtering process for a portion having pure signal components f (i, j, k) from the signal path represented by the gain constant (a) of 1-a in the signal components without noise. In this is a series of processes to extract the signal to recover the degraded resolution.

In this way, the pure signal component L (g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1)) extracted by the signal extraction unit 300 is added to the signal output from the gain controller 303 ( By using the method 304, it is possible to recover the resolution degraded during the noise filtering process.

Subsequently, inverse quantization and inverse DCT transformation is performed by the inverse transformer 306 through the quantization process of the DCT / quantization unit 305, and the result of adding the prediction signal of the previous frame to the memory 308 by the adder 307. The motion estimation compensation unit 309 performs motion estimation compensation on the stored signal, and the output unit 310 undergoes the quantization of the DCT / quantization unit 305 with respect to the noise filtered signal through the above process. A process of outputting (bit stream) to (VLC / FIFO) is performed.

FIG. 4 (f) shows a final noise-filtered signal f (i, j, k) (Filtered image), and shows that the blocking phenomenon is reduced by reducing the signal disconnection at the block boundary point.

5 is a second embodiment of a noise removing apparatus to which a noise removing method for video encoding according to the present invention is applied.

A signal extractor 500 for extracting a signal component from which noise is removed from an input signal including noise, a gain controller 501 controlled by a gain a varying with respect to the extracted signal component, and the input signal A gain controller 502 controlled with a gain (1-a) variable with respect to the subtractor, a subtractor 511 for obtaining a difference signal between the input video signal and the previous frame video signal, and the difference signal value of the subtractor 511 A gain variable 512 for variably controlling the gain a, an adder 503 for adding output values of the gain controllers 501 and 502, an output value of the adder 503, a signal component of a previous frame, A subtractor 504 for outputting a difference value with respect to an error signal of a DCT, a DCT / quantizer 505 for performing DCT conversion and quantization of the operation and gain controlled signal, and an inverse transform for the DCT and quantized signal. IQ / IDCT conversion unit 506, An adder 507 for adding and outputting the inverse transformed signal and the output of the motion estimation compensator 509, a memory 508 for storing the added signal, and a motion estimation for the output signal of the memory 508 And a motion estimation compensator 509 for performing compensation, and an output unit (VLC / FIFO) 510 for converting and outputting the DCT and the quantized signal into a bitstream. It consists of a calculation operation process of.

f (i, j, k) = f (i, j, k-1) + (1-a) {g (i, j, k)} + (a) {L (g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1))}, meaning;

Maximum component to be determined as a signal from the input signal g (i, j, k) of the current frame including the noise and the predicted signal f (i, j, k-1) of the previous frame k-1. Extracting a signal, performing gain (a, 1-a) control on the signal component and the input signal according to an error signal value, and adding the gain-controlled value to a prediction of a previous frame. The process of obtaining a difference value from the signal and outputting it as a noise-filtered signal value.

The noise removing operation for video encoding of the present invention starts from FIG.

That is, the embodiment of Figure 3

f (i, j, k) = f (i, j, k-1) + (1-a) {{g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1)}-L ( g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1))} + L (g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1)), where previous 5 by considering the predicted signal component f (i, j, k) of the frame k-1 to be the same as the signal component L (f (i, j, k-1) extracted at that time. An embodiment is implemented.

That is, f (i, j, k) = f (i, j, k-1) + (1-a) {{g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1)}

-L (g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1))} + L (g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1))

= f (i, j, k-1) + (1-a) {g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1)}

+ (a) {L (g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1))}

= f (i, j, k-1) + (1-a) {(g (i, j, k)} + (a) {L (g (i, j, k) -f (i, j, k-1))}

In the process of, the signal extracting unit 500 from the input signal g (i, j, k) and the predicted signal f (i, j, k-1) is pure signal component L (g (i, j, k)), and the difference signal is obtained from the subtractor 511 with respect to the current input video signal and the video signal of the previous frame, and the gain variable 512 of the gain controller 501 according to the difference signal value is obtained. Gain (a) is controlled, the extracted pure signal component value is passed through the gain controller 501 to obtain a gain (a), and the gain (1-a) is added to the input signal as it is and these two values are added. Noise filtering is performed by obtaining a difference value from the predicted signal of the previous frame from the result.

Subsequent quantization, inverse quantization, memory and motion estimation and compensation, and bitstream conversion are performed as described above.

The embodiment of FIG. 5 and the embodiment of FIG. 3 have the following differences.

That is, from the viewpoint of the pixel to be filtered, the embodiment of FIG. 5 may filter in consideration of the pixels of the previous frame, and the embodiment of FIG. 3 has a difference considering only the difference signal.

Thus, when the embodiment of FIG. 5 is implemented, the data of the filter support area of the noise filter may be used in a more generalized manner, thereby increasing the noise removing effect than the case of FIG.

Therefore, it is suitable when the noise component present in the input image is large, and when the noise component is small, it is useful to apply it when the noise component is small because the configuration of Fig. 4 is advantageous in terms of calculation amount.

The signal extraction method in the embodiment of FIG. 5 is the same as that of FIG.

According to the noise removing method and apparatus therefor according to the present invention, the noise-filtered signal components are extracted in advance, and after filtering through gain control with only the remaining signals, the original pure extracted signal components are added. Noise components can be removed while maintaining the resolution of the signal.

In addition, since processing of the image in block units performs noise filtering in consideration of this, it is possible to reduce the blocking phenomenon and to improve the image quality.

Claims (6)

An error signal extraction process for obtaining a difference signal between a current input video signal including noise and a previous noise canceled video signal, a signal extraction process for extracting only pure signal components from which noise is removed from the error signal, and the error signal And a noise reduction process for reducing a noise component through a variable gain control according to the level with respect to a difference value between the extracted signal and a noise obtained by adding the extracted signal to the noise reduced signal component to remove noise. Noise reduction method for video encoding characterized in that the control to the process to recover the reduced resolution during the filtering process. The method of claim 1, wherein the signal extraction process is performed as an average value of a video signal in units of blocks. The method of claim 1, wherein the signal extraction process is performed by performing low pass filtering on a pixel-by-pixel basis. The method of claim 1, wherein the signal extraction process is performed by applying an adaptive weight corresponding to the degree of displacement in consideration of the degree of displacement with the pixels in the front and rear positions on the basis of the pixel to be filtered. How to remove noise. A signal extraction process of extracting only pure signal components from which noise is removed from a current input video signal including noise and a previous noise canceled video signal, variable gain control of the input video signal and the extracted signal, respectively; And outputting a noise-filtered video signal based on a difference between the sum of the extracted video signal and the variable gain-controlled signal and the previous video signal. 6. The method of claim 5, wherein the variable gain control is performed according to the difference signal level by obtaining the difference signal between the input video signal and the video signal of the previous frame.

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