Method of constructing merge list

• US 9,338,460 B2
• Filed: 11/12/2014
• Issued: 05/10/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 11/07/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Gensquare LLC
• Original Assignee: Infobridge Pte. Ltd.
• Inventors: Oh, Soo Mi, Yang, Moonock
• Primary Examiner(s): Kelley, Christopher S
• Assistant Examiner(s): Retallick, Kaitlin A
• Application Number:
  US14/539,976
• Publication Number:
  US 20150071348A1
• Time in Patent Office: 545 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/124 Quantisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/126 Details of normalisation or weighting functions, e.g. normalisation matrices or variable uniform quantisers
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/139 Analysis of motion vectors, e.g. their magnitude, direction, variance or reliability
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/174 the region being a slice, e.g. a line of blocks or a group of blocks
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/176 the region being a block, e.g. a macroblock
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/196 being specially adapted for the computation of encoding parameters, e.g. by averaging previously computed encoding parameters processing of motion vectors H04N19/513
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/198 including smoothing of a sequence of encoding parameters, e.g. by averaging, by choice of the maximum, minimum or median value
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/463 by compressing encoding parameters before transmission
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/503 involving temporal prediction adaptive coding with adaptive selection between spatial and temporal predictive coding H04N19/107; adaptive coding with adaptive selection among a plurality of temporal predictive coding modes H04N19/109
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/51 Motion estimation or motion compensation
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/513 Processing of motion vectors
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/52 by predictive encoding
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/593 involving spatial prediction techniques

Abstract

Provided is a method checks availability of spatial merge candidates and a temporal merge candidate, constructs a merge candidate list using available spatial and temporal merge candidates, and adds one or more candidates if the number of available spatial and temporal merge candidates is smaller than a predetermined number. The spatial merge candidate is motion information of a spatial merge candidate block, the spatial merge candidate block is a left block, an above block, an above-right block, a left-below block or an above-left block of the current block, and if the current block is a second prediction unit partitioned by asymmetric partitioning, the spatial merge candidate corresponding to a first prediction unit partitioned by the asymmetric partitioning is set as unavailable. Therefore, the coding efficiency of motion information is improved by removing unavailable merge candidates and adding new merge candidates from the merge list.

Claims

1. An image decoding apparatus comprising:

an inter prediction unit configured to generate a merge candidate list using available spatial and temporal merge candidates, obtain motion information using a merge index and the merge candidate list, and generate a prediction block using the motion information;

an inverse quantization unit configured to inverse-quantize a quantized block using a quantization parameter to generate a transform block;

an inverse transform unit configured to inverse-transform the transform block to generate a residual block; and

an adder configured to generate a reconstructed block using the prediction block and the residual block,

wherein if a current prediction unit is a second prediction unit partitioned by asymmetric partitioning, the spatial merge candidate corresponding to a first prediction unit partitioned by the asymmetric partitioning is set as unavailable, and

wherein the quantization parameter is generated using a quantization parameter predictor and a differential quantization parameter, and the quantization parameter predictor is generated by averaging two quantization parameters of a left quantization parameter, an above quantization parameter and a previous quantization parameter if two or more quantization parameters are available.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein if the size of the current prediction unit is (3/2)N×

2N, the left spatial merge candidate is set as unavailable.

3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the left spatial merge candidate is motion information of the left prediction unit of the current prediction unit.

4. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein if an above spatial merge candidate has the same motion information of the left spatial merge candidate, the above spatial merge candidate is set as unavailable.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the size of the current prediction unit is determined based on a partitioning mode and a size of the coding unit.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein if a current coding unit has an allowed minimum size, the asymmetric partitioning is not allowed.

7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the information of the above-left block is set as the merge candidate block if the current prediction unit is a second prediction unit partitioned by asymmetric partitioning.

8. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein a motion vector of the temporal merge candidate is a motion vector of a temporal merge candidate block within a temporal merge candidate picture, and a position of the temporal merge candidate block is determined depending on a position of the current prediction unit within an LCU.

9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein a reference picture index of the temporal merge candidate is 0.

10. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein if only one of the left quantization parameter and the above quantization parameter is available, an average of the available quantization parameter and the previous quantization parameter is set as the quantization parameter predictor.