Bit rate distribution for motion estimation in H.264 coding

In this paper, we analyze the bit rate distribution of the full search and the fast search motion estimation algorithms in H.264. It shows both experimentally and theoretically that a well-designed fast block-matching algorithm not only speeds up motion estimation process, but also improves the rate-distortion performance. This is in contrast to the common belief that full search always yields optimal rate-distortion performance under the same test condition.