An improved inter-prediction motion estimation algorithm of AVS

Research on inter-prediction algorithms is an important respect in the real-time video codec technology. In the regarded studies, the prediction error can be reduced by incorporating high accuracy estimation and compensation algorithms. So the performance of compressed video can be improved. However, this brings a considerable cost for the complexity of encoder. The computation complexity is mainly due to the complexity of motion estimation. The paper presents an improved algorithm with the initialized searching point prediction, half-stop principle, beforehand skip mode decision, reduced search window and optional search model. This algorithm for the integer-pixel motion estimation is provided to reduce computation complexity in the block-matching process. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can reduce about 64%-73% of computation complexity compared to full search but only with little PSNR degradation.