In addition, the inter-predictor 124 may perform a bidirectional optical flow (BIO) process of the present disclosure to generate a prediction block of the current block through bidirectional prediction. In other words, after determining bidirectional motion vectors for the current block, the inter-predictor 124 may generate a prediction block for the current block by motion compensation according the BIO process on a per image pixel basis or a per subblock basis. In other examples, one or more other units of the encoding apparatus may be additionally involved in carrying out the BIO process of the present disclosure. In addition, since the BIO process is performed by applying an explicit equation using pre-decoded information shared between the encoding apparatus and the decoding apparatus, signaling of additional information for the BIO process is not required.
In motion compensation by bidirectional prediction, whether to apply the BIO process may be determined in various ways. Details of the BIO process and details of whether to apply the BIO process in the motion compensation procedure will be described with reference to
Various methods may be used to minimize the number of bits required to encode motion information.
For example, when the reference picture and the motion vector of the current block are the same as the reference picture and the motion vector of a neighboring block, the motion information about the current block may be transmitted to the decoding apparatus by encoding information for identifying the neighboring block. This method is called a “merge mode.”