Fast decoder side motion vector derivation for inter frame video coding

Decoder-side motion vector derivation (DMVD) using template matching has been shown to improve coding efficiency of H.264/AVC based video coding. Instead of explicitly coding motion vectors into the bitstream, the decoder performs motion estimation in order to derive the motion vector used for motion compensated prediction. In previous works, DMVD was performed using a full template matching search in a limited search range. In this paper, a candidate based fast search algorithm replaces the full search. While the complexity reduction especially for the decoder is quite significant, the coding efficiency remains comparable. While for the full search algorithm BD-bitrate savings of 7.4% averaged over CIF and HD sequences according to the VCEG common conditions for IPPP high profile are observed, the proposed fast search achieves bitrate reductions of up to 7.5% on average. By further omitting sub-pel refinement, average savings observed for CIF and HD are still up to 7%.