Frame rate up-conversion using forward-backward jointing motion estimation and spatio-temporal motion vector smoothing

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new motion compensated frame interpolation algorithm for frame rate-up conversion in multimedia applications. In our proposed method, motion vectors (MVs) are estimated by jointing forward and backward motion estimation, then smoothed and re-estimated by using a spatio-temporal MV smoothing and MV post-refinement. The refinement method is based on the coherence of MV field in both spatial and temporal domain to correct false MVs. Finally, we propose an adaptive motion compensated interpolation to reduce block artifacts in intermediate frame, especially in boundary regions. The experiments show that our algorithm outperforms the conventional methods in term of PSNR and visual quality.