The computational complexity of video encoding is reduced by taking the decision whether to encode a region of a video frame or to skip the encoding prior to calculating whether any motion has occurred in respect of the same region in the previous frame. In one embodiment, the decision on whether to skip the encoding of a region is based o an estimate of the energy of pixel values in the region and/or en estimate of discrete cosine transform coefficients. In a further embodiment, the decision is based on an estimate of the distortion likely to occur if the region is no encoded.
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