A New Diamond-Arc-Hexagon Search Algorithm for Fast Block Motion Estimation

This work presents a new block motion estimation approach, diamond-arc-hexagon search (DAHS), which uses diamond, arc, and hexagon search patterns to accomplish the fast searching process. According to the characteristic of the center-based motion vector distribution for the real-world video sequence, DAHS employs a small diamond pattern extended hexagon search to refine the central area search. Furthermore for the estimation in large motion situations, the strategy of the large diamond-to-arc search can keep the performance well. Experimental results indicate that DAHS is both suitable for (quasi-) stationary and large motion searches. DAHS outperforms the efficient three-step (E3SS) and hexagon-based search (HEXBS) in prediction quality, and improves the searching speed about 9% compared to E3SS