Moving picture coding apparatus

Abstract

A motion vector estimation circuit ( 101 ) interpolates, with sub-pixel precision, a prediction block indicated by a motion vector estimated with integer-pixel precision as well as a region around the prediction block within a search area in a reference picture, using a 2 -tap pixel interpolator ( 605 ), and estimates two or more motion vectors indicating positions of prediction blocks having high correlation with a current block to be coded, within the interpolated region. A motion compensation circuit ( 102 ) interpolates, with sub-pixel precision, each of the prediction blocks indicated by the estimated motion vectors, using a 6 -tap pixel interpolator ( 901 ), compares the coding costs of the interpolated prediction blocks, and determines a motion vector indicating a position of a prediction block having highest correlation with the current block, from among the estimated motion vectors. As mentioned above, the number of motion vector candidates is narrowed down by sub-pixel precision motion prediction using a reference image created by a 2 -tap filter, and then motion compensation is performed on these motion vector candidates using a 6 -tap filter. Therefore, it becomes possible to achieve moving picture compression performance as high as sub-pixel precision motion prediction using a reference image created by a 6 -tap filter.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to a moving picture encoding device, and in particular, to an efficient motion estimation allowing sub-pixel accuracy in a large scale integration system (LSI), software, etc. for encoding moving pictures with limited resources motion picture encoding device. Background technique [0002] In recent years, with the improvement of computer performance and the increase of Internet communication capabilities, digital contents have been widely used. Digital DVD has rapidly replaced the analog video home system (VHS) for the recording of moving pictures (video) as a sequence of still pictures. A video sequence contains a huge amount of information, and thus techniques to compress the size of the video are necessary to process the video information into digital data. In digital video content, encoding is used to compress information. This video compression technique has been used in various products. For example, MPGE-2 is us...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0036] However, neither Patent Document 1 nor Patent Document 2 discloses reducing the amount of calculation required to generate a reference image using a 6-tap filter when performing sub-pixel-accurate motion prediction

In addition, the method disclosed in Patent Document 3 reduces the amount of redundant calculations by using a 6-tap filter for generating sub-pixels, but actually needs to calculate a range that is not used for searching when performing sub-pixel-accurate motion prediction, so that The image generating unit 2401 generates an overall interpolated image for an image

Another disadvantage of the method of Patent Document 3 is that it requires a high-capacity high-resolution reference image memory as a new component for holding the high-resolution reference image that has been interpolated through a 6-tap filter

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