A real time MPEG2 main profile, main level motion-estimator chipset

Motion estimation is a well-known bottleneck of real time image compression when using MPEG-like schemes. With digital TV formats - as in MPEG2 main profile, main level - it requires high computational power and I/O bandwidth. Classical approaches (systolic arrays implementing full search block matching algorithms) are not sufficient for such applications, where large search ranges are needed. Of course, those approaches led to VLSIs, some of them widely used, but, as performance is limited, many of them are required for reasonable range increasing the cost of coders. Recent developments have shown new integrated solutions for simple profile. The two-chip chipset presented here implements a more sophisticated algorithm to reach large search ranges at reasonable cost at main profile. A number of features are also included - video capture, host interface, formatted video output, filtering, 3:2 pull down, external memory management, etc. - preventing the use of external devices to perform the same functions.