Adaptive Techniques for a Fast Frequency Domain Motion Estimation

Dynamic Block Size Motion Estimation (DBS-ME) and smart Dynamic Early Search Termination (DEST) techniques are proposed and implemented in this paper. Both of the proposed techniques are combined and applied to the conventional phase correlation technique. The performance, visual quality and complexity of the proposed techniques are compared to that of the original phase correlation motion estimation (PC-ME) and Full Search Block Matching (FSBM) techniques. The proposed techniques provide an increase in the encoding quality besides a decrease in the computational complexity of ME process. Results show that there is approximately 100% of the stationary blocks decided by the FSBM algorithm are discovered correctly which consequently reduce the computations compared with the original FS and PC techniques. Also it is noted that, DBS-ME technique greatly decreases the computations required for ME process by decreasing the required padding to one or two pixels for both the current and the reference blocks. In addition, the motion field of the proposed algorithm gives much lower entropy than PC-ME which means more reduction in the transmitted bit rate.