DETAILED ACTION
1. This office action is in response to U.S. Patent Application No.: 18/929,418 filed on 10/28/2024 with effective filing date 6/18/2020. Claims 1-20 are pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
2. The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
3. The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
4. Claim(s) 1, 11, 7, & 17-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tsai et al. US 2022/0086439 A1 in view of Leleannec et al. US 2021/0203929 A1.
Per claims 1, 11 & 18, Tsai et al. discloses a method of video decoding, executable by one or more processors, the method comprising: receiving a video bitstream comprising a plurality of frames, including a current frame having a chroma component and a luma component (para: 41, e.g. FIG. 7 illustrates an example of the constrained Luma-Chroma separated coding tree coding, where the left block 710 is the tree structure of luma component and the right block 720 is the tree structure of chroma component); and when a semi-decoupled partitioning (SDP) mode is enabled for the current frame: parsing one or more parameters of a first constrained directional enhancement filter (CDEF) process from the video bitstream (para: 61, e.g. the proposed checking if chroma partition follows luma partition, which can be, for example, used for determining whether LM mode is enabled, is only applied when the chroma partition size is larger than (or larger than or equal to) a second predefined size/shape); applying the first CDEF process to the chroma component of the current frame according to the one or more parameters (para: 70, e.g. the concept of chroma split following the luma split can be applied to LM mode constraints (for example, the LM syntax signalling or LM mode enabling). In this embodiment, there is no constraint (e.g. chroma split shall follow luma split) on the chroma split syntaxes. However, the LM is only enabled when the chroma split follows the luma split);
Tsai et al. fails to explicitly disclose the remaining claim limitation.
Leleannec et al. however in the same field of endeavor teaches parsing one or more second parameters of a second CDEF process from the video bitstream (para: 62); applying the second CDEF process to the luma component of the current frame according to the one or more second parameters, wherein the second CDEF process is separate from the first CDEF process (para: 62 & fig. 5, e.g. the luma block, corresponding to the luma component of the CTU on FIG. 5, shares the first quadtree split in the partitioning tree structure with the chroma block corresponding to any of the chroma components of CTU. Then, the luma block 1, corresponding to the luma component of the CU 1 on FIG. 5, and the chroma block 2 corresponding to any of the chroma components of CU 2, are split in a different way therefore a dual partitioning tree structure is determined for luma block 1 and for the co-located chroma blocks 2); and reconstructing the current frame in accordance with the first CDEF process and the second CDEF process (para: 62 & fig. 7, e.g. in a step 730, the block is coded based at least on the determined partitioning tree structure).
Therefore, in view of disclosures by Leleannec et al., it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to combine Tsai et al. and Leleannec et al. in order to enables jointly coding and decoding a video to ensure high coding efficiency while satisfying hardware decoding pipeline constraints to optimize the coding efficiency by separated trees for smaller blocks and limit complexity of a decoding pipeline.
Per claims 7 & 17, Leleannec et al. further teaches the method of claim 1, wherein an output of the first CDEF process is a set of filtered chroma samples, and wherein a different output of the second CDEF process is a set of filtered luma samples (para: 62 & fig. 5, e.g. the luma block, corresponding to the luma component of the CTU on FIG. 5, shares the first quadtree split in the partitioning tree structure with the chroma block corresponding to any of the chroma components of CTU. Then, the luma block 1, corresponding to the luma component of the CU 1 on FIG. 5, and the chroma block 2 corresponding to any of the chroma components of CU 2, are split in a different way therefore a dual partitioning tree structure is determined for luma block 1 and for the co-located chroma blocks 2).
5. Claim(s) 2-3, 5-6, 10, 12-13, 15-16 & 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tsai et al. US 2022/0086439 A1 in view of Leleannec et al. US 2021/0203929 A1 and Zhang et al. US 2019/0045186 A1.
Per claims 2 & 12, Tsai et al. in view of Leleannec et al. fails to explicitly teach the limitation.
Zhang et al. however in the same field of endeavor teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the first CDEF process and the second CDEF process are selected based on the chroma component having a different partitioning than the luma component (para: 60, e.g. the chroma plane and luma planes use the same CDEF combinations; a number QP zones other than 6 may be applied and chroma plane and luma plane may use different CDEF combinations; for different frame types and video resolutions, the QP zone separation and CDEF combinations may differ).
Therefore, in view of disclosures by Zhang et al., it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to combine Tsai et al., Leleannec et al. and Zhang et al. in order to facilitate a loop filter selection to improve compression efficiency and/or video quality, so that exhaustive searching of available CDEF combinations is avoided. The system provides reduced complexity, faster operation, reduced memory transfers, high efficient computing, and reduced power requirements.
Per claims 3, 13 & 19, Zhang et al. further teaches the method of claim 1, wherein an input to the first CDEF process comprises one or more reconstructed samples of the chroma component, and wherein a different input to the second CDEF process comprises one or more reconstructed samples of the luma component (para: 60 & 67, e.g. six QP zones are used for CDEF coding; the chroma plane and luma planes use the same CDEF combinations; however, a number QP zones other than 6 may be applied and chroma plane and luma plane may use different CDEF combinations).
Per claim 5, Zhang et al. further teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the first CDEF process and the second CDEF process are selected based on a size of the luma component (para: 33 & 60 e.g. video frame 201 may be segmented into one or more super blocks as illustrated with respect to super block 203, which may, in turn, be segmented into one or more blocks 205; the chroma plane and luma planes use the same CDEF combinations; a number QP zones other than 6 may be applied and chroma plane and luma plane may use different CDEF combinations; for different frame types and video resolutions, the QP zone separation and CDEF combinations may differ).
Per claim 6, Zhang et al. further teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the first CDEF process and the second CDEF process are selected based on a size of the chroma component (para: 33 & 60 e.g. video frame 201 may be segmented into one or more super blocks as illustrated with respect to super block 203, which may, in turn, be segmented into one or more blocks 205; the chroma plane and luma planes use the same CDEF combinations; a number QP zones other than 6 may be applied and chroma plane and luma plane may use different CDEF combinations; for different frame types and video resolutions, the QP zone separation and CDEF combinations may differ).
Per claims 10 & 16, Zhang et al. further teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the luma component and the chroma component have a same block size (para: 60 & 67, e.g. six QP zones are used for CDEF coding; the chroma plane and luma planes use the same CDEF combinations; however, a number QP zones other than 6 may be applied and chroma plane and luma plane may use different CDEF combinations).
Per claims 15 & 20, Zhang et al. further teaches the method of claim 11, wherein the first CDEF process and the second CDEF process are selected based on a size of the luma component or a size of the chroma component (para: 33 & 60 e.g. video frame 201 may be segmented into one or more super blocks as illustrated with respect to super block 203, which may, in turn, be segmented into one or more blocks 205; the chroma plane and luma planes use the same CDEF combinations; a number QP zones other than 6 may be applied and chroma plane and luma plane may use different CDEF combinations; for different frame types and video resolutions, the QP zone separation and CDEF combinations may differ).
Allowable Subject Matter
6. Claims 4, 8-9 & 14 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
7. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Chen et al. US 10,652,535 B1, e.g. the filtering may be performed using a loop restoration tool, such as where the pre-filtered pixel values are output from a constrained directional enhancement filter (CDEF) tool. Alternatively, the filtering may be performed using the CDEF tool or another coding tool.
Zhang et al. US 2019/0052877 A1, e.g. determining whether or not to perform in-loop filtering based on evaluating a maximum coding bit limit of a picture of the video, a quantization parameter of the picture, and a coding structure of the video.
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/Irfan Habib/Examiner, Art Unit 2485