VIDEO CODING USING SEPARATE LEARNING AND FILTERING PATHWAYS

Separate pathways for filtering and for machine learning are introduced within a video coder. A first pathway filters a first copy of a reconstructed frame to produce a filtered frame, which is included in an output video stream for display at a user device. A second pathway processes a second copy of the reconstructed frame using a learning model, such as for training and/or inference. The first and second pathways are introduced after the reconstruction stage of an encoder or decoder. The input to each of the first and second pathways is thus produced without using a non-injective function, and, while the first pathway includes at least one non-injective function, the second pathway does not. As a result, training the learning model using the second copy of the reconstructed frame results in a greater classification accuracy upper bound than training the learning model using the filtered frame.