A system and method that determines the direction of an edge in a video image using a gradient of the edge in a first direction and a gradient of the edge in a second direction. The system uses the sign of the product of the gradient in the first direction and the gradient in the second direction along with a ratio of multiples of the two gradients to determine the direction of the edge. The direction may correspond to an angle range, where the ratio of the gradients corresponds to a trigonometric function of the angle of the edge.