New flexible motion estimation technique for scalable MPEG encoding using display frame order and multi-temporal references

The applicability of MPEG video coding can be improved by scaling both the algorithmic complexity and resource usage appropriately for the intended device and application. For this purpose, we present a new technique for motion estimation, based on a scalable three-stage process including frame processing in display order, approximation of motion vector fields using multiple references and optional quality refinements. Experiments show that the computational effort is scalable with a factor of 14, resulting in a global variation of 7 dB SNR in picture quality. At full processing, our technique slightly outperforms a 32×32 full search motion estimation. The technique forms a valuable contribution to mobile MPEG coding applications, following the scalability concepts introduced by Mietens, de With and Hentschel (see IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Proc. (ICIP 2001), vol.3, p.462-465, Oct. 2001).