Three-Step for Faster Diamond Search.

Abstract: Motion estimation based on block matching plays a very important role in video coding. In this paper, a fast motion estimation algorithm was proposed—three-step diamond search (TSDS), which is an improved version of the diamond search algorithm. This algorithm can be used for the new video coding standard H.264/AVC. Compared with diamond search (DS), the TSDS algorithm achieves the performance but the searching points are less 20% on average. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm greatly outperforms four-step search and DS in the number of searching points. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]