Motion field interpolation for frame rate conversion

Frame rate conversion is essential for the exchange of video material between different industries and applications. Motion compensated interpolation (MCI) has been shown to provide good frame rate conversion results. Conventional MCI methods estimate one motion vector per block of the interpolated frame. The main disadvantage of such methods are the blocking artefacts that occur at the boundaries of interpolated blocks. Pixel-level motion vectors have been shown to reduce this effect and improve the quality of the interpolated frames. However, this is usually achieved at the expense of a significant increase in computational complexity. This paper proposes a low-complexity method for converting a block-level motion field to a pixel-level motion field. The method is called motion field interpolation (MFI). Simulation results show the superior performance of this method.