Apparatus, articles of manufacture, and methods for improved adaptive loop filtering in video encoding

An apparatus comprising:

• memory;
• instructions;
• and
• at least one processor circuit to be programmed based on the instructions to:
• apply a sample adaptive offset (SAO) filter to luma information associated with a block of video data to generate SAO filtered luma information;
• input the SAO filtered luma information to a cross-component adaptive loop filter (CC-ALF), the CC-ALF to generate at least one chroma CC-ALF output based on the input SAO filtered luma information;
• and
• generate chroma filtered data based on the at least one chroma CC-ALF output and at least one chroma adaptive loop filter (ALF) output.

At least one non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions to cause at least one processor circuit to at least:

• apply a sample adaptive offset (SAO) filter to luma information associated with a block of video data to generate SAO filtered luma information;
• input the SAO filtered luma information to a cross-component adaptive loop filter (CC-ALF), the CC-ALF to generate at least one chroma CC-ALF output based on the input SAO filtered luma information;
• and
• generate chroma filtered data based on the at least one chroma CC-ALF output and at least one chroma adaptive loop filter (ALF) output.

A method comprising:

• applying a sample adaptive offset (SAO) filter to luma information associated with a block of video data to generate SAO filtered luma information;
• inputting the SAO filtered luma information to a cross-component adaptive loop filter (CC-ALF), the CC-ALF to generate at least one chroma CC-ALF output based on the input SAO filtered luma information;
• and
• generating chroma filtered data based on the at least one chroma CC-ALF output and at least one chroma adaptive loop filter (ALF) output.