Research Article Open Access

Efficient Motion Estimation by Fast Three Step Search Algorithms

Abstract

Video Compression algorithms have a large number of applications ranging from Video Conferencing to Video on Demand to Video phones. It reduces the high bandwidth requirement to a large extent. Block matching is a widely used method for stereo vision, visual tracking and video compression. Efficient motion estimation is an important problem because it determines the compression efficiency and complexity of a video encoder. Many fast algorithms for block matching have been proposed in the past. This paper present a parallel architecture for a fast three step search (FTSS) algorithm for motion estimation, which involves reduced number of checking points compared to the standard three step search (TSS) algorithm. Block matching motion estimation is the most important part of video coding system. Degradation of performance while applying the improved algorithm to several standard images has been shown to be insignificant compared to the standard algorithm. The proposed architecture uses only three processing elements accompanied with use of intelligent data arrangement and memory configuration. Because of their low area requirement and low memory bandwidth requirements, the proposed architecture provides an efficient solution for real-time motion estimations as required by video applications of various data rates, from low bit-rate video to HDTV systems. FTSS is much more robust, produces smaller motion compensation error, and has a very compatible computational complexity.

Namrata Verma, Tejeshwari Sahu , Pallavi Sahu

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