Quasi-Lossless Fast Motion Estimation Algorithm using Distribution of Motion Vector and Adaptive Search Pattern and Matching Criterion
Seongmo Park, Tae-Kyung Ryu, Yong-Jae Jung, Kwang-Seok Moon, Jong‐Nam Kim · Journal of Korea Multimedia Society · 2010
In this paper, we propose a fast motion estimation algorithm for video encoding. Conventional fast motion estimation algorithms have a serious problem of low prediction quality in some frames. However, full search based fast algorithms have low computational reduction ratio. In the paper, we propose an algorithm that significantly reduces unnecessary computations, while keeping prediction quality almost similar to that of the full search. The proposed algorithm uses distribution probability of motion vectors and adaptive search patterns and block matching criteria. By taking different search patterns and error criteria of block matching according to distribution probability of motion vectors, we can reduces only unnecessary computations efficiently. Our algorithm takes only 20~30% in computational amount and has decreased prediction quality about 0~0.02dB compared with the fast full search of the H.264 reference software. Our algorithm will be useful to real-time video coding applications using MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC standards.