A novel adaptive multi-mode search algorithm for fast block-matching motion estimation

Motion estimation is the main bottleneck in real-time video coding applications, and the search for fast and effective motion estimation algorithms has been a challenging problem recently. This paper describes a new block-matching algorithm that exploits the spatial correlations, and proposes an adaptive multi-mode search algorithm (AMMS) based on the analysis of the neighboring area surrounding the predicted motion vectors. Compared with the well-known diamond search (DS) and hexagon-based search (HEXBS) algorithms recently proposed, our algorithm is robust and achieves similar performance with significantly reduced number of search points.