Modified diamond-square search technique for efficient motion estimation

Motion Estimation is an important step in video compression wherein block matching algorithms are used for computing Motion Vectors (MV). Diamond Search (DS) is one of the most efficient block matching motion estimation (BMME) algorithms. A revised diamond search algorithm, which modifies the two search patterns of DS, is proposed in this paper. The MDSS algorithm on comparison with the existing search algorithms is advantageous as it minimizes the number of search points used, while maintaining the video quality. Moreover it tries to accelerate the search process compared with the diamond search algorithm.