Large Diamond and Small Pentagon Search Patterns for Fast Motion Estimation

Abstract

In fast motion estimation, a search pattern with different shape or size has a very important impact on search speed and distortion performance. A motion estimation algorithm based on the novel large diamond and small pentagon search patterns is proposed in this paper. The stride of the proposed large diamond pattern is 3 pixels and it just need 2 or 3 search points for every new search step. So, the large diamond pattern can find the lager-motion vector quickly compare with the 2-pixel-stride hexagon pattern, and, it is does not easy to lose correct search path and fall into locally optimum point compare with the three-step search. The proposed small pentagon pattern can do more refined search than the small diamond pattern and small hexagon pattern. The proposed algorithm may find any motion vector regardless of no-, small-, medium- ,or large-motion with fewer search points than the diamond search algorithm and the hexagon-based algorithm while maintaining similar distortion performance. Experimental results substantially justify the further improvement achieved of the LDSPS algorithm compared with several other popular fast algorithms.

Supported by the NSFC(60505007), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University, the Doctoral Education Foundation of MOE and the ERIPKU. The research is made in the State Key Lab of Software Development Environment.