An Efficient Search Range Decision Algorithm for Motion Estimation in H.264/AVC
Mohammed Golam Sarwer, Q. M. Jonathan Wu · 2009
Variable block size motion estimation (VBME) is a new feature introduced in H.264/AVC video coding standard. VBME plays a significant rule in achieving outstanding performance in compression efficiency and video quality. However, the VBME is the most time consuming part of H.264/AVC encoder. In order to reduce computations in motion estimation module, this paper presents a novel adaptive search area selection method by utilizing the information of the previously computed motion vector differences (MVDs). The direction of picture movement of the previously computed blocks is also considered for search area selection. In this algorithm, narrow search ranges are chosen for areas in which little motion occurs and wide ranges are chosen for areas of significant motion. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm provides significant improvement in coding speed with negligible objective quality degradation compared to the full search motion estimation method adopted by H.264/AVC reference software.