This document proposes to modify the reference sample smoothing process used for intra prediction. It is proposed to use the explicit [1 2 1] reference smoothing operation only for the Planar mode. For the integer-sloped diagonal modes, two methods are studied: (1) either the smoothing operation is disabled for these modes, or (2) the smoothing of these modes is performed by the 0-th phase of the 4-tap intra interpolation filters. It is asserted that this change (either method) simplifies the prediction of the non-planar modes by removing the additional stage of [1 2 1] filtering. The proposed changes result in negligible BD-rate difference from the anchor; the BD-rate performance of Method 1 is as follows: (0.00%, −0.02%, 0.00%) for (Y, Cb, Cr) with runtimes of 100% (EncT) and 99% (DecT) for AI configuration and (0.00%, 0.01%, −0.02%) for (Y, Cb, Cr) with runtimes of 99% (EncT) and 99% (DecT) for RA configuration; the BD-rate performance of Method 2 is as follows: (0.00%, −0.04%, 0.02%) for (Y, Cb, Cr) with runtimes of 101% (EncT) and 100% (DecT) for AI configuration and (0.01%, −0.17%, −0.14%) for (Y, Cb, Cr) with runtimes of 99% (EncT) and 100% (DecT) for RA configuration.