A method for motion adaptive frame rate up-conversion

A frame interpolation algorithm for frame rate up-conversion of progressive image sequences is proposed. The algorithm is based on simple motion compensation and linear interpolation. A motion vector is searched for each pixel in the interpolated image and the resulting motion field is median filtered to remove inconsistent vectors. Averaging along the motion trajectory is used to produce the interpolated pixel values. The main novelty of the proposed method is the motion compensation algorithm which has been designed with low computational complexity as an important criterion. Subsampled blocks are used in block matching and the vector search range is constrained to the most likely motion vectors. Simulation results show that good visual quality has been obtained with moderate complexity. The algorithm has been designed mainly for 50 Hz to 75 Hz frame rate up-conversion with applications in a multimedia environment, but it can also be used in advanced television receivers to remove artifacts due to low scan rate.