Review towards the Fast Block Matching Algorithms for Video Motion Estimation

A video sequence consists of a series of frames. In order to compress the video for efficient storage and transmission, the temporal redundancy among adjacent frames must be exploited. A frame is selected as reference frame and subsequent frames are predicted from the reference frame using a technique known as motion estimation. Real videos contain a mixture of motions with slow and fast contents. Among block matching motion estimation algorithms, the full search algorithm is known for its superiority in the performance over other matching techniques. However, this method is computationally very extensive. Several fast block matching algorithms (FBMAs) have been proposed in the literature with the aim to reduce computational costs while maintaining desired quality performance, but all these methods are considered to be sub optimal. No fixed fast block matching algorithm can efficiently remove temporal redundancy of video sequences with wide motion contents.