A memory-efficient filtering approach is used to code images and video. A buffer having a fixed size based on a size of processing units to use for filtering a video frame is allocated. For each of the processing units, pre-filtered pixel values are copied from a respective region of the video frame to the buffer based on a writing point for the video frame and an offset applied to the writing point, filtering is performed against the pre-filtered pixel values from the buffer to produce filtered pixel values, and the filtered pixel values are written to the video frame based on the writing point and the offset. 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.