Frame rate up-conversion with edge-weighted motion estimation and trilateral interpolation

We propose in this paper a novel video frame-rate up-conversion method using edge-weighted motion estimation and trilateral filtering. First, the method produces two frames of the intermediate frame from its previous and following frames with estimated motion vectors. It then obtains an initial estimate from the two frames and calculates its pixel reliability. Finally, a trilateral filter is applied on the initial estimate to correct the unreliable pixels and missing pixels. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed method not only reduces the computation cost on motion vector estimation, but also suppresses the interpolation noises and motion compensation errors. Experimental results show that the proposed method provides better subjective and objective quality, and obtains up to 4-dB PSNR improvement.