Perceptual in-Loop Filter for Image and Video Compression

Huairui Wang, Guangjie Ren, Tong Ouyang, Junxi Zhang, Wenwei Han, Zizheng Liu, Zhenzhong Chen

Abstract: In this paper, we introduce our hybrid image and video compression scheme enhanced by CNN-optimized in-loop filter. Specifically, a Structure Preserving in-Loop Filter (SPiLF) is incorporated in the hybrid video codec Enhanced Compression Model (ECM), where two branches, i.e., gradient branch and pixel branch, are developed based on the dense residual unit (DRU). To provide pleasant visual quality, the Generative adversarial networks (GAN) loss and LPIPS loss are further considered. Therefore, the proposal is mainly focusing on perceptual-friendly image compression for human vision, whilst video compression could be further investigated. The experiments show that the proposed method achieves advanced visual quality when compared to the traditional methods.