Block standstill and homogeneity based fast motion estimation algorithm for H.264 video coding

Abstract

The paper proposed a fast motion estimation algorithm based on the spatial homogeneity and temporal standstill of video sequences. It classified a frame into different regions such as standstill, stationary or dynamic region. For MBs lying in the standstill region, motion estimation is skipped; for MBs lying in the stationary region, motion estimation is applied once to an MB in the region, and the resulting motion vector will be used by other MBs in the same region. Normal motion estimation is only carried out in the dynamic region. The new algorithm can be used either by itself alone, or by combining with other existing fast motion estimation methods. Experimental results show that the new algorithm can significantly improve the time efficiency of the H.264 encoder, and is able to achieve an average reduction of 27% in encoding, with an average PSNR loss of only 0.09 dB and 0.42% bit rate increase, compared with the original H.264 reference software. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.