Adaptive motion tracking block matching algorithms for video coding

In most block-based video coding systems, the fast block matching algorithms (BMAs) use the origin as the initial search center, which may not track the motion very well. To improve the accuracy of the fast BMAs, a new adaptive motion tracking search algorithm is proposed. Based on the spatial correlation of motion blocks, a predicted starting search point, which reflects the motion trend of the current block, is adaptively chosen. This predicted search center is found closer to the global minimum, and thus the center-biased BMAs can be used to find the motion vector more efficiently. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm enhances the accuracy of the fast center-biased BMAs, such as the new three-step search, the four-step search, and the block-based gradient descent search, as well as reduces their computational requirement