Enhanced block motion estimation based on Threshold-Aware Two-path search method

For stationary or quasi-stationary frames of a video sequence, traditional block matching algorithms (BMA) will easily lead the search to be trapped into a local minimum. In this paper, a novel method called the threshold-aware two-path search (TATPS) block matching algorithm is presented. Different from other BMAs, our proposed TATPS algorithm uses two search paths. With the threshold predetermined by the ratio of block distortion measure (BMD), when the value of the observed indicator in the first search step is greater than this threshold, another search path is enabled. Our approach is to compensate the performance degradation due to insufficient number of candidate blocks in traditional BMAs. Experimental results show that the proposed TATPS algorithm can get better performance than the traditional BMAs while just increasing little computational cost.