Coarse-to-fine frame interpolation for frame rate up-conversion using pyramid structure

Frame rate up-conversion (FRC) is one of the main issues that have arisen in recent years with the emergence of new television and multimedia systems; it is required for conversion between any two display formats with different frame rates. We present a frame interpolation algorithm for FRC. It is based on a pyramid structure and the motion compensation process is performed independently at each resolution level. A technique similar to control grid interpolation (CGI) is employed to process hole regions generated at the top level of the pyramid. Bidirectional motion estimation (ME) and prediction mode selection are utilized at intermediate levels. Finally, at the bottom level, motion vector refinement and overlapped block motion compensation (OBMC) are used. In experiments, the frame rate of the progressive video sequence is up-converted by a factor of two and the performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with that of the conventional frame interpolation method. Experiments with several test sequences show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.