A Fast Motion Estimation Algorithm Based on Diamond and Line/Triangle Search Patterns

Based on the directional characteristic of SAD (sum of absolute difference) distribution and the center-biased characteristic of motion vectors, a fast BMA (block-matching motion estimation algorithm), DLTS (diamond line/triangle search), is proposed in this paper. DLTS employs line search pattern (LP) or triangle search pattern (TP) adaptively according to the distance between the MBD (minimum block distortion) and SMBD (second MBD) points to locate the best matching block with large motion vector, and diamond search pattern(DP) to refine the motion vector. Although the proposed DLTS can also be trapped in local minima, the experimental results show that it is faster than DTS (diamond triangle search) and its encoding efficiency is almost the same as that of DTS.