Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-4, 9, 19, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Seregin, US 2018/00098064.
Regarding claim 1, Seregin discloses: a method of video coding, comprising:
determining an intra mode look-up table (IMLUT) for intra predicting a current block of video data, wherein the IMLUT includes a subset of all available intra prediction modes that are available
for intra predicting the current block (See [0071], disclosing choosing a subset of intra prediction modes (e.g. 67 out of 131 modes) to predict a current block, and storing these selected modes in a look-up table.);
constructing an intra prediction mode list based on the IMLUT (See [0072], disclosing deriving a subset of modes for a look-up table based on most frequently used modes.); and
encoding or decoding the current block of the video data based on the intra prediction mode list (See [0044], “video encoder 20 may signal a threshold indicating a block size or block area, and for the blocks smaller or no greater than the threshold, video encoder 20 may use a certain number of intra modes.”).
Regarding claim 2, Seregin discloses: the method of claim 1, wherein the determining the IMLUT further comprises:
signaling or receiving syntax elements associated with the IMLUT into or from a bitstream of the video data at one of a sequence level, a picture level, a slice level (See [0114], Entropy encoding unit 56 may also entropy encode the motion vectors and the other syntax elements for the current video slice being coded.”), a coding tree unit (CTU) level (See [0040], “Each of the CTUs may comprise a coding tree block of luma samples, two corresponding coding tree blocks of chroma samples, and syntax structures used to code the samples of the coding tree blocks.”), a coding unit (CU) level, or a block level.
Regarding claim 3, Seregin discloses: the method of claim 1, wherein the determining the IMLUT further comprises:
determining the IMLUT based on at least one of a block size (See [0059], In one example, video encoder 20 and video decoder 30 may utilize different groupings of modes depending on the size (e.g., the height and width) of the block being coded.”) or a block shape of the current block of the video data.
Regarding claim 4, Seregin discloses: the method of claim 1, wherein the determining the IMLUT further comprises:
determining the IMLUT based on one of intra prediction modes of all coded CUs of a previously coded slice or a previously coded picture (See [0120], When the video slice is coded as an intra-coded (I) slice, intra prediction unit 84 of prediction processing unit 81 may generate prediction data for a video block of the current video slice based on a signaled intra prediction mode and data from previously decoded blocks of the current frame or picture.), intra prediction modes of all coded CUs of a current slice or a current picture including the current block, intra prediction modes of all coded CUs of a reference picture of the current block, or intra prediction modes of all coded CU s of a collocated reference picture of the current block.
Regarding claim 9, Seregin discloses: the method of claim 1, wherein the constructing the intra prediction mode list further comprises:
constructing the intra prediction mode list using only intra prediction modes in the IMLUT (See [0071], “In other words, the chosen subset may include only 67 modes currently utilizes in JEM and not the additional 64 angular modes proposed by this disclosure.”).
Apparatus claim 19 is directed to a video coding apparatus having processing circuity configured to execute steps that correspond to the steps of video coding method claim 1. Therefore, apparatus claim 19 corresponds to method claim 1 and is rejected for the reasons of anticipation as given above.
Claim 20 is directed to a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform steps that correspond to the steps recited in method claim 1. Therefore, apparatus claim 20 corresponds to method claim 1 and is rejected for the reasons of anticipation as given above.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Seregin, in view of Dong, US 2019/0306503 A1.
Regarding claim 5, Seregin discloses the limitations of claim 1, upon which depends claim 5. Seregin does not disclose: the method of claim 4, wherein a temporal layer of the current picture which includes the current block is the same or higher than a temporal layer of the previously coded picture corresponding to the IMLUT of the current slice or current picture.
However, Dong discloses in an analogous art directed to deblocking filtering performing a partial temporal prediction and storing a look-up table of filter indices for deblocking filtering. See [0156]. In this context, Dong also discloses restricting reference to another 4-D LUT of a previously coded picture to those pictures having a same or smaller temporal layer index of the current slice or picture. See [0167].
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the applicant’s effective filing date to incorporate the restriction, for prediction between temporal layers, of referring only to those frame that are from the same or lower than a current temporal layer, as disclosed in Dong, in order to preserve the decodeability of a lower temporal layer without dependence on a higher temporal layer. This feature accords with a basic premise of scalable video coding that lower spatial or temporal layers are less expendable, and therefore more reliable as reference layers, than higher spatial or temporal layers.
Claims 6-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Seregin, in view of Liu, US 11,140,412 B2.
Regarding claim 6, Seregin discloses the limitations of claim 1, upon which depends claim 6. Seregin does not disclose: the method of claim 1, further comprising:
adding an intra prediction mode of the current block into the IMLUT based on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) rule.
Liu discloses in column 9, lines 30-35 maintaining a table of motion vector predictor candidates of previous blocks that is emptied when a new slice is encountered.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the applicant’s effective filing date to incorporate the FIFO rule into the intra mode look-up table disclosed in Seregin, based on Liu’s disclosure to use a FIFO rule for motion vector predictor candidates, in order to maintain the most recent, and therefore most likely-to-be relevant, prediction modes, in the look-up table. See Liu, column 9, lines 30-35.
Regarding claim 7, the combination of Seregin in view of Liu discloses the limitations of claim 6, which claim 7 depends. This combination, specifically Liu, further discloses: the method of claim 6, further comprising:
performing a redundancy check on the intra prediction mode added into the IMLUT (Liu discloses in column 9, lines 27-45 performing a redundancy check on motion candidates added to a table for history-based motion vector prediction).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the Applicant’s effective filing date to perform this redundancy check on the intra prediction mode look-up table disclosed in Seregin, in order to which ensures that candidates with same motion information are excluded from the list so that coding efficiency is improved. See Liu, column 5, lines 40-45.
Regarding claim 8, Seregin discloses the limitations of claim 1, upon which depends claim 8. Seregin does not disclose: the method of claim 1, further comprising:
in response to one of a predefined number of CTU rows, a tile, a slice, or a picture having been processed, clearing all intra prediction modes in the IMLUT.
Liu discloses emptying a table for history-based motion vector prediction after each new slice. See column 9, lines 18-26.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the Applicant’s effective filing date to incorporate the step of clearing the intra-mode mapping look-up table, in order to maintain the most relevant intra prediction modes in the table for the current block. See Liu, column 9, line 18-37.
Claims 10-14, 17, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Seregin, in view of Salehifar, US 2021/0203984 A1.
Regarding claim 10, Seregin discloses: the method of claim 1, wherein the constructing the intra prediction mode list further comprises:
inserting intra prediction modes in the IMLUT into the intra prediction mode list before an intra prediction mode not in the IMLUT.
However, Salehifar discloses in an analogous art arranging remaining intra prediction modes, i.e. those not included in a most probably mode (MPM) list in a lookup table on the basis of a priority list according to their probability of being applied, as disclosed in [0085]-[0086].
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the applicant’s effective filing date to incorporate the priority-based intra prediction mode arrangement disclosed in Salehifar, including placing according higher priority intra modes found in an IMLUT than to those not found in the IMLUT, into the intra prediction mode look-up table ordering in Seregin, in order to optimize the lookup table according to the probability of occurrence of prediction modes, leading to improved prediction efficiency and/or accuracy. See Salehifar [0139].
Regarding claim 11, the combination of Seregin in view of Salehifar discloses the limitations of claim 10, upon which depends claim 11. This combination, specifically, Salehifar further discloses: the method of claim 10, further comprising:
inserting an intra prediction mode in a most probable mode (MPM) list after the intra prediction modes in the IMLUT and before an intra prediction mode not in the MPM list, the MPM list being generated based on neighboring blocks of the current block (Salehifar discloses inserting intra prediction modes not in an MPM into one of one or more subgroups for arrangement in the lookup table below the MPM candidates in a predefined order.).
Regarding claim 12, Seregin discloses the limitation of claim 1, upon which claim 12 depends. Seregin does not disclose: the method of claim 1, wherein the constructing the intra prediction mode list further comprises:
inserting intra prediction modes in the IMLUT into the intra prediction mode list according to predefined order.
However, Salehifar discloses in an analogous art arranging intra prediction modes in a LUT according to a probability of their occurrence.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the applicant’s effective filing date to incorporate the priority-based intra prediction mode arrangement disclosed in Salehifar, including placing according higher priority intra modes found in an IMLUT than to those not found in the IMLUT, into the intra prediction mode look-up table ordering in Seregin, in order to optimize the lookup table according to the probability of occurrence of prediction modes, leading to improved prediction efficiency and/or accuracy. See Salehifar [0139].
Regarding claim 13, the combination of Seregin in view of Salehifar discloses the limitations of claim 12, upon which depends claim 13. This combination, specifically, Salehifar further discloses the method of claim 12, wherein the predefined order is an ascending order of mode indexes of the intra prediction modes in the IMLUT (See [0086], “the remaining intra prediction modes not included in the MPM candidates among all intra prediction modes in the order of the prediction mode number”).
Regarding claim 14, Seregin discloses the limitation of claim 1, upon which claim 12 depends. Seregin does not disclose: the method of claim 1, wherein the intra prediction mode list includes an MPM list and a non-MPM list, and the constructing further comprises:
constructing the MPM list based on the IMLUT.
However, Salehifar discloses constructing an intra prediction mode candidate list having both an MPM sub-group and a non-MPM sub-group, as disclosed in [0091]. Salehifar further discloses constructing an intra mode candidate list order based on a lookup table. See abstract.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the applicant’s effective filing date to incorporate the priority-based intra prediction mode arrangement disclosed in Salehifar, including placing according higher priority intra modes found in an IMLUT than to those not found in the IMLUT, into the intra prediction mode look-up table ordering in Seregin, in order to optimize the lookup table according to the probability of occurrence of prediction modes, leading to improved prediction efficiency and/or accuracy. See Salehifar [0139].
Regarding claim 17, Seregin discloses the limitation of claim 1, upon which claim 12 depends. Seregin does not disclose: the method of claim 1, wherein the intra prediction mode list includes an MPM list generated based on neighboring blocks of the current block and a non-MPM list generated based on the IMLUT.
However, Salehifar discloses this limitation in an analogous art. Salehifar discloses constructing
an intra prediction mode candidate list comprising an MPM list and a group of remaining intra prediction modes whose prior priority in the list is set based on a look-up table. See Salehifar [0110], “the remaining intra prediction modes excluding the MPM candidates may be rearranged in the order of priority indicated in the lookup table.”
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the applicant’s effective filing date to incorporate the feature of constructing an intra prediction mode candidate list based on a combination of an MPM list and a set of remaining intra prediction mode candidates ordered based on a lookup table, as disclosed in Salehifar, in order to improve coding efficiency by indexing the intra prediction modes according to their probability of being applied in an image/block. See Salehifar, [0086].
Regarding claim 18, This combination, specifically Salehifar, further discloses: the method of claim 17, wherein the intra prediction modes in the IMLUT is on top of the non-MPM list.
Claims 15 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Seregin, in view of Salehifar, in further view of Zhang, US 2021/0211709 A1
Regarding claim 15, the combination of Seregin in view of Salehifar discloses the limitation of claim 14, upon which claim 15 depends. This combination does not disclose: the method of claim 14, wherein a number of intra prediction modes in the MPM list is M, a number of intra prediction modes in the IMLUT is N, and the constructing the MPM list further comprises:
in response to M ≥ N, inserting the intra prediction modes in the IMLUT into the MPM list before an intra prediction mode not in the IMLUT; and
in response to M ≤ N, inserting a subset of the intra prediction modes in the IMLUT into the MPM list.
See [0208], which discloses “Alternatively, motion candidates from look-up tables have a higher priority compared to non-adjacent candidates. Motion candidates from look-up tables are first checked. If the total number of candidates are still less than the maximumly allowed number, the non-adjacent blocks are checked to add non-adjacent candidates to the merge candidate list”
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the Applicant’s effective filing date to fill an MPM list with intra prediction mode candidates by first filling the table with look-up table candidates, followed by non-LUT candidates, as disclosed in Zhang, in order to prioritize the most likely-to-be relevant LUT candidates over the non-LUT candidates.
Regarding claim 16, the combination of Seregin, in view of Salehifar, in view of Zhang discloses the limitations of claim 15, upon which depends claim 16. This combination, specifically Zhang, further discloses: the method of claim 15, further comprising:
in response to M≤ N, inserting at least one remaining intra prediction mode in the IMLUT into the non-MPM list (See [0228], “If the list is not full, add the remaining motion candidates in the look-up table.”).
Conclusion
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/KYLE M LOTFI/ Examiner, Art Unit 2425
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