A center-biased hybrid search method using plus search pattern for block motion estimation

This paper proposes a new method for block motion estimation based on center-biased hybrid search (CBHS) using plus search that employ a hybrid of a compact plus shaped search and a diamond search. It has only 5 search points for the best case and, on average, 6.6 search points. CBHS is about 34.3 times faster than the full-search algorithm. Hence, CBHS is consistently faster than the other suboptimal block-matching techniques. This paper compares the popular suboptimal block-matching technique with CBHS in which both the processing speed and the accuracy of motion compensation are tested over widely used H.263 test video sequences.