Split-merge video displacement estimation

Motion Compensation is one of the most effective techniques used in interframe data compression. In this paper we present a parallel block-matching algorithm for estimating interframe displacement of blocks with minimum error. The algorithm is designed for a simple parallel architecture to process video in real time. The blocks may have variable size and shape depending on a split-and-merge technique. The algorithm performs a segmentation of the image into regions (objects) moving in the same direction and uses this knowledge to improve the transmission of the displacement vectors. This segmentation identifies the part of the frame “active” with respect to the previous frame and preserves some of the spatial correlation between blocks