A Novel Diamond Search Algorithm for Fast Block Motion Estimation

Video coding is a complex process, comprising a combination of spatial, temporal and statistical data reduction techniques. Of these techniques, motion estimation taking advantage of inter-frame information redundancy plays the most important role. So finding the most efficient motion estimation algorithm remains an important research problem. In this paper, a New Diamond Search (NDS) algorithm is proposed to improve the efficiency of video coding. The NDS algorithm applies Cross Search Pattern (CSP) in the very beginning search steps and switch using Large Diamond Search Pattern (LDSP) and Small Diamond Search Pattern (SDSP), so as to avoid the problem of local optimum. Experimental results show that the proposed NDS algorithm is obviously improved in search speed and search accuracy compared with the Diamond Search algorithm. The NDS algorithm can achieve very close quality compared to full search but with 18.51 times speedup. In term of speed, compared with the DS algorithm, the NDS algorithm can achieve more than 125% speedup.