A group of macroblock based motion estimation algorithm supporting adaptive search range for H.264 video coding

This paper proposes a group of macroblock (GOMB) based motion estimation (ME) algorithm supporting adaptive search range (ASR) for H.264 video coding. Adopting the concept of GOMB to generate the Predicted Motion Vector (PMV) for doing H.264 ME achieves good results in balancing the computational complexity, video quality and memory bandwidth. Moreover, it supports adaptive search range (ASR) in doing ME to greatly reduce both the computational complexity and memory bandwidth while maintaining good video quality. In HD1080 resolution, compared to the JM full search block matching algorithm (FSBMA) centered at (0, 0) and JM PMV-based block matching algorithm (BMA), the proposed algorithm respectively reduces about 93% and 81% memory bandwidth, as well as 99% and 76% computational complexity with negligible PSNR drop.