Fast control grid point estimation for mesh based motion estimation

In this paper, a fast algorithm is proposed for mesh based motion estimation. Mesh based motion estimation provides a smooth motion field and better visual quality than the block based method in the sense that it would not produce blocking artifacts. However, the search of optimal grid point locations in mesh based motion estimation is very slow by the fact that it needs a lot of interpolations and iteration during the search. The proposed fast algorithm utilizes a block-based algorithm, which is much faster, in the search of the optimal location of grid points. A varying search block size approach is proposed to use during iteration. The current fast algorithm is proved to produce a comparable result as with the traditional mesh based motion estimation using exhaustive search.