An efficient motion estimation method for MPEG-4 video encoder

The designer who wishes to develop an efficient video encoding systems for consumer devices such as digital video cameras and recorders must find an fast motion estimation method to reduce the huge computation complexity. Block-matching motion estimation (BMME) is an essential part of several video-coding standards. Full-search block-matching motion estimation is always used in reference software as a benchmark. Most of these fast algorithms sacrifice search quality by using only a subset of the search area in order to reduce the total number of searches. Moreover, most of the existing fast algorithms focus on a macro-block full-pel motion estimation. In MPEG-4, a new 8/spl times/8 block full-pel ME is introduced. This paper describes an efficient method for MPEG-4 ME algorithm. The proposed method can significantly reduce the total number of searches and computations without degrading the search quality.