A Highly Parallel Sub-Pel Accurate Motion Estimator for H.264

This paper presents a new H.264 motion estimation algorithm and architecture for video encoding. The algorithm resolves the sequential data dependencies of H.264 motion estimation by a new method, called "staggered approach". It adapts existing motion search methods (3DRS, hierarchical full search), maximizing parallel execution and allowing efficient pipelined execution while maintaining the high compression rate of H.264. Its regular and reduced-computation processing scheme makes the algorithm particularly suitable for high-performance hardware implementations, as required for realtime encoding of HDTV. The proposed motion estimator architecture demonstrates the suitability of the algorithm for cost-efficient consumer HDTV encoder chips