A Content-Motion-Aware Motion Estimation for Quality-Stationary Video Coding. (18th August 2010)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lin Lin, Meng-Chun Meng-Chun; Dung Dung, Lan-Rong Lan-Rong
• Other Names: Liao Liao Mark Mark Academic Editor.
• Is Part Of: EURASIP journal on advances in signal processing. Volume 2010(2010)
• Publication Date: 2010-08-18
• Subjects: Signal processing -- Periodicals; Traitement du signal; Signal processing; Periodicals; 621.3822
• DOI: 10.1155/2010/403634
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1687-6172

Abstract

Abstract : The block-matching motion estimation has been aggressively developed for years. Many papers have presented fast block-matching algorithms (FBMAs) for the reduction of computation complexity. Nevertheless, their results, in terms of video quality and bitrate, are rather content-varying. Very few FBMAs can result in stationary or quasistationary video quality for different motion types of video content. Instead of using multiple search algorithms, this paper proposes a quality-stationary motion estimation with a unified search mechanism. This paper presents a content-motion-aware motion estimation for quality-stationary video coding. Under the rate control mechanism, the proposed motion estimation, based on subsample approach, adaptively adjusts the subsample ratio with the motion-level of video sequence to keep the degradation of video quality low. The proposed approach is a companion for all kinds of FBMAs in H.264/AVC. As shown in experimental results, the proposed approach can produce stationary quality. Comparing with the full-search block-matching algorithm, the quality degradation is less than 0.36 dB while the average saving of power consumption is 69.6%. When applying the proposed approach for the fast motion estimation (FME) algorithm in H.264/AVC JM reference software, the proposed approach can save 62.2% of the power consumption while the quality degradation is less than 0.27 dB.