Adaptive Variable Block-Size Early Motion Estimation Termination Algorithm for H.264/AVC Video Coding Standard

作者：Sarwer Mohammed Golam^*; Wu Q M Jonathan

来源：IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 2009, 19(8): 1196-1201.

DOI：10.1109/TCSVT.2009.2020322

• H.264/AVC
• motion estimation (ME)
• rate-distortion (RD) cost
• video coding

The variable block-size motion estimation (ME) process is the H.264/AVC encoder's most time-consuming function. This letter proposes to reduce the complexity of the ME process with an early termination algorithm that features an adaptive threshold based on the statistical characteristics of rate-distortion (RD) cost regarding current block and previously processed blocks and modes. In this method, most motion searches can be stopped early, with a large number of search points saved. A region-based search is also suggested to further reduce the computation required for full search ME. A search point reduction scheme for the fast motion estimation of H.264/AVC is also introduced, and the experimental results illustrate how the proposed method reduces ME times for full search and fast motion estimation by about 77 and 31%, respectively, despite the insignificant degradation of RD performance.

• 出版日期2009-8