A Fast Search Method for Integer Motion Estimation for H.264 Coding

Abstract

The invention discloses a quick integer motion estimation searching method used for H.264 coding. The quick integer motion estimation searching method comprises the following steps that firstly, sub-sampling processing is conducted on pixel points in a whole searching window SW1, searching is only conducted on the pixel points in a 16*16 mode, and N best-matched candidate sample pixel points are found out according to SAD standards; according to convergence rates and distribution positions of the N candidate points, a searching window SW2 is re-unfolded; re-searching is conducted on pixel points in the SW2 to obtain a best integer motion vector. According to the number N of the set candidate sample pixel points, an operator can make a choice between the image quality and the calculation amount. The smaller the value of N is, the smaller the number of the searching points and the calculation amount are and the faster integer motion estimation is completed, however, the effects are achieved at the cost of image quality lowering. Conversely, the large the value of N is, the larger the number of the searching points and the calculation amount are, however, the image quality is improved. In the quick integer motion estimation searching method used for H.264 coding, the value of N is set to be one to three. The quick integer motion estimation searching method used for H.264 coding effectively reduces the pixel points in need of searching, lowers the calculation complexity and increases the calculations speed through a coarse searching step and a fine searching step.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to a video image coding in the computer field, in particular to a fast search method for integer motion estimation of the H.264 protocol. Background technique [0002] Two international standardization organizations, ISO / IEC and ITU-T, jointly formulated the new generation video compression standard H.264. Since the H.264 video compression standard was officially announced in March 2003, it has been widely used in real-time video surveillance, low-latency video conferencing, network video on demand, digital video storage and other consumer electronics applications. [0003] The reason why H.264 has such excellent compression performance is due to the introduction of various technologies, such as intra-frame prediction, multiple reference frames, inter-frame variable-size block motion estimation, 1 / 4 pixel precision motion vector, integer Transformation and quantization, context-adaptive entropy coding and deblocking filtering tec...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0004] Among the integer motion estimation methods, the simplest and most effective method is the full search method (FS, Full Search), which exhausts all the pixels in the search window for matching, but this method requires a huge amount of computation, which is difficult to meet Due to the requirement of real-time coding, many fast search methods have appeared, such as three-step search method (TSS, Three Step Search), new three-step method (NTSS, New Three Step Search), two-dimensional logarithmic search method (TDL, 2D- logarithmic search), cross search method (CS, Cross Search), diamond search method (DS, Diamond Search), etc.

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