Motion estimation for video compression using modified hexagonal search

Motion estimation is a key problem in digital video processing. In motion estimation, search patterns have a very important impact on searching speed and distortion performance. Hexagonal search achieves almost the same visual quality with full-search algorithm by taking fewer search points than diamond search. An adaptive threshold for early termination is introduced to avoid redundant calculation after the searching point is good enough. The simulation result shows that the proposed approach reduces the computational cost as compared to existing Hexagon Search Algorithm, with negligible loss in visual quality.