Abstract
The H.264 video compression standard supports seven variable block sizes ranging from 4 × 4 to 16 × 16 for one Macro Block (MB) with 16 × 16 size to conduct motion estimation (ME) and compensation. This new feature achieves significant coding gain at the cost of huge computation complexity. Dozens of fast mode decision algorithms with fast block size selection have been proposed to reduce complexity. In this paper, we propose an improved fast block size selection method based on MB movement characteristic. The Motion Vector (MV) and block residual are employed to analyze the movement characteristic of one MB novelly. Then the movement characteristic is used to decide whether and how to merge or split the MB for encoding. Experimental results show that this method speeds up mode decision procedure dramatically with negligible compression performance degradation.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andy CY (2004) Efficient block-size selection algorithm for inter-frame coding in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. IEEE ICASSP III169:III172
Chan M, Yu Y, Constantinides AG (1990) Variable size block matching motion compensation with applications to video coding. Proc Inst Elect Eng, 1 137(4):205–212 Aug
Chen Z, Zhou P, He Y (2002) Fast integer pel and fractional pel motion estimation for JVT. presented at the 6th JVT-F017 Meeting, Awaji Island, Japan Dec
H.264/AVC reference software, available online at: http://bs.hhi.de/-suehring/tml/download
Joint Video Team (JVT) of ITU-T, & ISO/IEC JTC 1 (2005) Advanced video coding: ITU-T Rec. H.264 and ISO/IEC14496-10, version 4: January
Kucukgoz M, Sun MT (2004) Early-stop and motion vector reuse for MPEG-2 to H.264 transcoding. Proc. SPIE 5308, Vis Commun Image Process, San Jose, CA, USA, pp 932–936
Rhee I, Marlin G, Muthukrishnan S, Packwood R (2000) Quadtree-structured variable-size blockmatching motion estimation with minimal error. IEEE Trans Circuits Syst Video Technol 10:42–50 Feb
Seferidis VE, Ghanbari M (1994) Adaptive motion estimation based on texture analysis. Communications, IEEE Transactions on 42(234):1277–1287 Part 2, Feb.-Aprl
Shen B, & Sethi LK (1996) Direct feature extraction from compressed images, S P E Vo1.2670 Storage & Retrieval for Image and Video Databases IV, p 404–414
Sullivan G, & Wiegand T (1998) Rate-distortion optimization for video compression. IEEE signal Process Mag 74–90, November
Tu YK, Yang JF, Shen YN, Sun M-T (2003) Fast variable-size block motion estimation using merging procedure with an adaptive threshold. Multimedia and Expo, 2003. ICME ’03. Proceedings. International Conference on 2:789–792
Wang HF, Liu QS, Lu HQ (2007a) An improved variable-size block-matching algorithm. Multimedia Tools Appl 34:221–237. doi:10.1007/s11042-006-0091-6
Wang XW, Sun J, Liu YQ, & Li RJ (2007b) Fast block size selection for H.264 video Encoder Based on MB Motion Characteristic. Multimedia and Expo, 2007 IEEE International Conference 372–375, July
Wu D, Pan F, Lim KP, Wu S, Li ZG, Lin X, Rahardja S, Ko CC (2005) Fast interblock size selection in H.264/AVC video coding. Circuits Syst Video Technol, IEEE Transactions on 15(7):953–958 July
Zhou Z, Sun MT (2004) Fast macro block inter mode decision and motion estimation for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. International Conference on Image Processing 2:789–792 Oct
Zhou Z, Sun MT, Hsu YF (2004) Fast variable block-size motion estimation algorithms based on merge and split procedures for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. ISCAS2004 3:III–725–728 May
Acknowledgement
This work is supported by CNGI-04-15-2A.CHINA. The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for invaluable comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wang, X., Sun, J., Xie, R. et al. An improved block size selection method based on macroblock movement characteristic. Multimed Tools Appl 43, 131–143 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-009-0260-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-009-0260-5