Affine SKIP and DIRECT modes for efficient video coding

Higher-order motion models were introduced in video coding a couple of decades ago, but have not been widely used due to both difficulty in parameters estimation and their requirement of more side information. Recently, researchers have put them back into consideration. In this paper, the affine motion model is employed in SKIP and DIRECT modes to produce a better prediction. In affine SKIP/DIRECT, candidate predictors of the motion parameters are derived from the motions of neighboring coded blocks, with the best predictor determined by rate-distortion tradeoff. Extensive experiments have shown the efficiency of these new affine modes. No additional motion estimation is needed, so the proposed method is also quite practical.