Content-Aware Fast Motion Estimation Algorithm

Abstract

In this paper, we propose the Content-Aware Fast Motion Estimation Algorithm (CAFME) that reduces computation of motion estimation (ME) while maintains almost the same coding efficiency. Motion estimation can be divided into two phases, searching phase and matching phase. In searching phase, we propose the Simple Dynamic Search Range algorithm (SDSR) based on video characteristics to reduce the number of search points (SP). In matching phase, we integrate the Successive Elimination Algorithm (SEA) and the integral frame to develop a new SEA for H.264/AVC video compression standard, called Successive Elimination Algorithm with Integral Frame (SEAIF). Besides, based on sum of absolute difference (SAD), we also propose the Early Termination Algorithm (ETA) to terminate motion estimation of current block early. We implement in H.264/AVC reference software JM9.4 and the experimental results show that our proposed algorithm can reduce the number of search points about 93.1%, encoding time about 42%, while maintains almost the same bitrate and PSNR