An Efficient Motion Estimation Algorithm for Mobile Video Applications

In this paper, a low complexity motion estimation algorithm based on a two-step search on gray coded video frames has been proposed. In this method, motion estimation is done in two steps. Firstly, a crude motion vector is obtained by performing motion estimation on the two most significant bits from the gray coded bit planes. The refinement of the motion vectors which were obtained from the first stage is then done on the gray coded image frames with 8 bits/pixel representation. In addition, a search pattern with an adaptive nature is used in the second stage of motion estimation instead of the full search. The proposed algorithm has been tested on several benchmark video sequences, and it is found that its performance is superior to a recently reported motion estimation algorithm.