An efficient motion estimation algorithm based on tracing techniques on large search windows

Motion estimation represents the most computationally intensive task for all efficient motion compensated compression standards. This fact, despite the several efforts aiming at reducing its complexity, still constitutes a serious obstacle for obtaining the highest quality results theoretically achievable by the standard. This is particularly evident when critical conditions occur, such as when very large search windows are needed to have efficient motion prediction for sequences containing large displacements. In this paper we present a new block motion estimation technique, based on the combination of the tracing of trajectories obtained from the already coded motion field and a genetic heuristic search. This technique can be applied to any group of picture structure of any block based compression standard, with a complexity reduction factor up to more than two orders of magnitude at optimal coding results.