ENHANCED CROSS-DIAMOND SEARCH BASED FAST BLOCK MATCHING MOTION ESTIMATION ALGORITHM

Abstract

A new fast motion estimation algorithm is presented in this paper. The algorithm, named Enhanced Cross-Diamond Search (ECDS), is based on the Diamond Search (DS) algorithm, which was adopted as the MPEG-4 standard. The DS algorithm, even though faster than most known algorithms, was found not to be very robust in terms of objective and subjective qualities for several sequences. We propose a novel ECDS algorithm using a small cross search as the initial step, and large/small DS patterns as subsequent steps for fast block motion estimation. Experimental results show that the ECDS is much more robust, provides a faster searching speed, and smaller distortions than other popular fast block-matching algorithms.