Joint motion compensated prediction and interpolation of video sequences

A block matching algorithm is presented for joint motion compensated prediction and interpolation that significantly reduces the side-information required to represent the motion vectors (MVs) in video coding compared to a method in which prediction and interpolation MVS are transmitted independently as recommended in the current MPEG standard. This is achieved by exploiting the temporal redundancy in MVs of nearby frames. A distortion measure which jointly evaluates the interpolation and prediction error energy is introduced to determine true MVs. Enhancements to the basic algorithm are provided to accommodate blocks whose motion across multiple frames is not correlated. Simulation results demonstrate that the resultant method provides essentially the same performance as an MPEG type method even for complex video sequences.<<ETX>>