Fast motion estimation algorithm based on mode and spatiotemporal correlation

Compared with the previous standard, the compression performance of H.264 has significantly improved because of different block-size motion estimation. However, encoder using above technology becomes extraordinarily complex. Thus, a realtime video encoder based on H.264 faces enormous challenges. Making full use of the spatiotemporal correlation of video and similar motion between the different-size block, according to the central-biased characteristic of motion vector, a fast motion estimation algorithm appropriated for H.264 is proposed. By effective prediction of search window center point, adaptive selection of search patterns and termination of the search, the speed of the proposed algorithm speedups 95-247 times than full search and 4.1-6.3 times than the fast motion estimation algorithm recommended in H.264 while maintains similar distortion performance.