VIDEO POSTFILTERING WITH MOTION-COMPENSATED TEMPORAL FILTERING AND/OR SPATIAL-ADAPTIVE FILTERING

A postfiltering process for improving the appearance of a video image includes motion compensated temporal filtering and spatial adaptive filtering. For each target pixel being filtered, the temporal filtering uses multiple motion vectors and one or more pixel values for a prior frame to determine one of more reference values for the target filter. In one embodiment, a weighted average of multiple motion vectors for blocks near or containing the target pixel value provides a filter vector that points to a pixel value in the prior frame. This pixel value is a reference value for the target pixel value and is combined with the target pixel value in a filter operation. Alternatively, multiple motion vectors for blocks near or containing the target pixel value point to pixel values in the prior frame that are averaged to determine a reference value for the target pixel value. In each alternative, the weighting for the average is selected according to the position of the target pixel value. The spatial filtering determines a dynamic range of pixel values in a smaller block containing the target pixel value and a dynamic range of pixel values in a larger block containing the target pixel value. The two dynamic ranges suggest the image context of the target pixel, and an appropriate spatial filter for the target pixel is selected according to the suggested context.