Motion estimation using a frame-based adaptive thresholding approach

Abstract

This paper proposes two frame-based adaptive thresholding algorithms for reducing the amount of computation involved in block-based motion estimation in the real-time and low-rate video coders. The proposed algorithms use an adaptive threshold for each of the frames to prejudge if each of the block matching computation is worthwhile. Based on the difference between the current and reference frames, the first algorithm determines a threshold in terms of the optimal trade-off between run-time and distortion, and the second algorithm determines a threshold according to a user specified percentage of total number of blocks. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms can significantly reduce the amount of computation compared to the previous algorithms, while almost fully maintaining the quality of the reconstructed image.