Frame rate up-conversion method based on texture adaptive bilateral motion estimation

In this paper, a new frame rate up-conversion scheme is proposed in order to overcome motion blur problems of liquid crystal displays caused by slow responses. Conventional bilateral motion estimation methods used in the frame rate upconversion scheme present a major drawback of missing true motion vectors if there are blocks with simple textures in search range. To solve this problem, a texture adaptive bilateral motion estimation method increasing the cost value of a block with simple texture is proposed. Also a motion estimation scheme that utilizes neighboring motion vector effectively is proposed to reduce computation time required to estimate motion. Since the proposed scheme does not apply all available motion vectors within search range, the execution time of frame rate up conversion can be reduced dramatically. Experimental results show that the interpolated frame image quality is improved as well as the processing time of the proposed method is greatly reduced compared with those of conventional methods.