Fast Disparity and Motion Estimation for Multi-view Video Coding

In this paper, we propose a fast disparity and motion estimation for multi-view video coding (MVC). When implementing MVC, one of the most critical problems is heavy computational complexity caused by the large amount of information in multi-view sequences. Hence, a fast algorithm is essential. To reduce this computational complexity, we adoptively controlled a search range considering the reliability of each macroblock. In order to estimate this reliability, we calculated the difference between the predicted vectors that were obtained from different methods. When working with conventional encoders, vectors can be predicted using median filtering from causal blocks. Moreover, we calculated another predicted vector using multi-view camera geometry or the relationship between the disparity and motion vectors. We assumed that this difference indicated the reliability of the current macroblock. By using these properties, we were able to determine new search range and reduce the number of searching points within the limited window. The proposed MVC system was tested with several multi- view sequences to evaluate performance. Experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm was able to reduce processing time by maximumly 70-80% in estimation process.