• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.305-315
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• 2008

Pre-proposed AHHS(Adaptive Hierarchical Hexagon Search) is a kind of the fast hierarchical block matching algorithm based on the AHS(Adaptive Hexagon Search). It is characterized as keeping the merits of the AHS capable of fast estimating motion vectors and also adaptively reducing the local minima often occurred in the video sequences with higher spatio-temporal motion activity. The objective of this paper is to propose the method effectively extending the horizontal biased pattern and the vertical biased pattern of the AHHS to improve its predictive image quality. In the paper, based on computer simulation results for multiple video sequences with different motion characteristics, the performance of the proposed method was analysed and assessed in terms of the predictive image quality and the computational time. The simulation results indicated that the proposed method was both suitable for (quasi-) stationary and large motion searches. While the proposed method increased the computational load on the process extending the hexagon search patterns, it could improve the predictive image quality so as to cancel out the increase of the computational load.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.441-449
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• 2007

In video coding, motion estimation is a process to estimate the pixel of the current frame from the reference frame, which affects directly the predictive quality and the encoding time. This paper is related to AHHS(Adaptive Hierarchical Hexagon Search) using spatio-temporal motion activity for fast motion estimation. The proposed method defines the spatio-temporal motion activity of the current macroblock using the motion vectors of its spatio-temporally adjacent macroblocks, and then conventional AHS(Adaptive Hexagon Search) is performed if the spatio-temporal motion activity is lower, otherwise, hierarchical hexagon search is performed on a multi-layered hierarchical space constructed by multiple sub-images with low frequency in wavelet transform. In the paper, based on computer simulation results for multiple video sequences with different motion characteristics, the performance of the proposed method was analysed and assessed in terms of the predictive quality and the computational time. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method is both suitable for (quasi-) stationary and large motion searches. The proposed method could keep the merit of the adaptive hexagon search capable of fast estimating motion vectors and also adaptively reduce the local minima occurred in the video sequences with higher spatio-temporal motion activity.