Self derivation of motion estimation techniques to improve video coding efficiency

This paper presents the techniques to self derive the motion vectors (MVs) at video decoder side to improve coding efficiency of B pictures. With the MVs information self derived at video decoder side, the transmission of these self-derived MVs from video encoder side to video decoder side is skipped and thus better coding efficiency can be achieved. Our proposed techniques derive the block-based MVs at video decoder side by considering the temporal correlation among the available pixels in the previously-decoded reference pictures. Utilizing the MVs derived at video decoder side can be added as one of coding mode candidates from video encoder where the video encoder can utilize this new coding mode during phase of the coding mode selection to better trade off the rate-distortion performance to improve the coding efficiency. Experiments have demonstrated that the BD bitrate improvement on top of ITU-T/VCEG Key Technology Area (KTA) Reference Software platform with an overall about 7% improvement on the hierarchical IbBbBbBbP coding structure under the common test conditions of the joint call for proposal for the new video coding technology from ISO/MPEG and ITU-T committee on January 2010.