Fast Motion Estimation by Motion Vector Merging Procedure for H. 264

In this paper, a fast motion estimation algorithm for variable block-size by using a motion vector merging procedure is proposed for H.264. The motion vectors of adjacent small blocks are merged to predict the motion vectors of larger blocks for reducing the computation. Experimental results show that our proposed method has lower computational complexity than full search, fast full search and fast motion estimation of the H.264 reference software JM93 with slight quality decrease and little bit-rate increase