In one aspect of this disclosure, techniques are described for the decoupling of uni-directional and bi-directional prediction weights, particularly for explicit weighted predictions of video blocks within a B-unit. According to this disclosure, explicit weights communicated in the bitstream may be applied by a decoder for explicit bi-directional prediction, but different weights (which may be default weights or separately defined explicit uni-directional weights) may be used for explicit uni-directional prediction. The described techniques may improve video quality relative to techniques that use the same explicit weights for explicit bi-directional prediction and explicit uni-directional prediction within a B-unit.