Search range adjustment and motion vector prediction for fast motion estimation: Using neighbouring motion vectors and distortions for adjustment of a search range and a starting point

Abstract

The block matching algorithm has been widely used for motion estimation, but it suffers from heavy computational complexity. Many researchers in video processing area have proposed fast motion estimation algorithms by adopting various ways to reduce its complexity. In this paper, we introduce a conventional method controlling a search range and defining a new starting point, and also discuss our proposed method which supplements previous work by using neighbouring block's motion vectors and distortions. Consequently, we obtained remarkable performance about 80 times faster than full search and 2.6 times faster than conventional algorithm with small video quality improvement in terms of PSNR. Therefore, the proposed method can be applied for real-time video processing applications.