A new class-based early termination method for fast motion estimation in video coding

Motion Estimation (ME) is one of the most time-consuming parts in video coding. It is always desirable to develop fast ME algorithms to reduce the ME complexity. In this paper, a new early termination method is proposed for fast motion estimation. The proposed method first classifies each macroblock into one of three classes based on the estimation of the possible matching cost improvement from future search points. Different early termination strategies are then applied to different classes. Experimental results show that the proposed method can significantly reduce the search points with little quality degradation.