A Fast Motion Vector Search Algorithm for Variable Blocks

摘要

A fast motion estimation (ME) algorithm is proposed to search motion vectors for variable blocks. The proposed method is based on the successive elimination algorithm (SEA) using sum norms to find the best estimate of the motion vectors and to implement efficient calculations for variable blocks. The proposed ME algorithm is applied to the Joint Video Team (JVT) encoder that performs a variable-block ME. In terms of computational complexity, the proposed ME algorithm with limited search range searches motion vectors at about 6.3 times as fast as the spiral full search and 5.5 times as fast as the fast full search using the hierarchical sum of absolute difference (SAD), while the PSNR (peak signal-to-noise ratio) of the reconstructed image is slightly degraded with only 0.1～0.4 dB.