We propose a novel fractal video coding method using fast block-matching motion estimation to overcome the drawback of the time-consuming character in the fractal coding. As fractal encoding essentially spends most time on the search for the best-matching block in a large domain pool, search patterns and the center-biased characteristics of motion vector distribution have large impact on both search speed and quality of block motion estimation. In this paper, firstly, we propose a new hexagon search algorithm (NHEXS), and, secondly, we ameliorate, by using this NHEXS, the traditional CPM/NCIM, which is based on Fisher's quadtree partition. This NHEXS uses two cross-shaped search patterns as the first two initial steps and large/small hexagon-shaped patterns as the subsequent steps for fast block motion estimation (BME). NHEXS employs halfway stop technique to achieve significant speedup on sequences with stationary and quasistationary blocks. To further reduce the computational complexity, NHEXS employs modified partial distortion criterion (MPDC). Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm spends less encoding time and achieves higher compression ratio and compression quality compared with the traditional CPM/NCIM method.
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