• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.28 no.7C
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• pp.726-732
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• 2003

The paper proposes a motion estimation (ME) technique to reduce computational complexity. It is achieved by skipping ME process for macro-blocks decided to be in no need of the operation. Thus, it is called ME skipping technique(MEST). In general, the ME is composed of integer pixel precision ME (IME) followed by half pixel precision ME (HME). The MEST is performed just before an IME process and makes a decision on skipping the IME process according to a criterion based on ME errors of adjacent macro-blocks (MBs) already encoded. When the IME process for a MB is decided to be skipped, which is called ME skip mode, the IME process is skipped and the integer pixel precision motion vector of the MB is just replaced by a predicted vector and used as the input of HME. On the other hands, the IME processes for MBs in ME non-skip mode are not skipped but normally performed. Accordingly, the MEST is very effective to reduce computational complexity when MBs in ME skip mode is abundant. In addition, when the MEST is applied to video encoder, it contributes to more accurate rate control and more robusaess for channel errors. It is experimentally shown that the MEST has the above advantages while maintaining good reconstructed image quality.