Dynamic control of motion estimation search parameters for low complex H.264/AVC video coding

With reference to H.264/AVC standard the paper proposes a new control algorithm, which dynamically configures the search parameters of the motion estimation (ME) task: used reference frames, valid block modes and search size. The aim is remarkably reducing the ME complexity with unaltered coding efficiency for a wide range of bit-rates from Kbps to tens of Mbps and video formats (QCIF to CCIR). The technique has been successfully applied to full search (FS) and fast ME engines.