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Fast multi-frame motion estimation for H264/AVC system

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Abstract

Advanced video compression standard, H264/AVC, with multi-frame motion estimation, can offer better motion-compensation than the previous coding standards. However, the implementation of real-time multi-frame estimation for an H264/AVC system is difficult due to heavy computations. In this paper, a fast algorithm is proposed in an effort to reduce the searching computation for motion estimation with five reference frames. The fast multi-frame motion estimation consists of the adaptive full-search, three-step search, and diamond search methods using the content adaptive control process. Efficient control flow is proposed to select the searching algorithm dependent on video features. The adaptive algorithm can achieve better rate-distortion and lower computation for H264/AVC coding. The experiments indicate that the speed-up is 6–15 times compared with the full search method, while the image quality slightly degrades.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronics Engineering, National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, 824, Taiwan, ROC

    Shih-Chang Hsia

  2. Department of Computer and Communication Engineering, National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, 824, Taiwan, ROC

    Shih-Chang Hsia & Yu-Chun Hung

Authors
  1. Shih-Chang Hsia
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  2. Yu-Chun Hung
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shih-Chang Hsia.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan, under NSC94-2213-E-327-004.

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Hsia, SC., Hung, YC. Fast multi-frame motion estimation for H264/AVC system. SIViP 4, 167–175 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-009-0108-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-009-0108-5

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