On handling of occlusion for frame rate up-conversion using video in-painting

With the advent of high frame rate driving in Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD), the need for high quality frame rate up-conversion has become very important. Various motion-compensated frame rate up-conversion (MCFRC) algorithms and have been developed to interpolate moving objects along their motion trajectories. In addition to robust motion estimation, accurate occlusion handling is also very essential for high quality interpolated video frames. Incorrect handling of occlusion can lead to artifacts that manifest itself as halo around moving objects and can be extremely objectionable. Many occlusion handling algorithms have been proposed in the literature over the years. Use of cascaded median filters was proposed in to handle occlusion. Intensity mismatch and the number of projected vectors in neighboring blocks were also used to detect occlusion. In this paper, we present a motion compensated video upconversion algorithm that produces occlusion free video. The algorithm is categorized in two steps. In the first stage occlusion area is detected using motion vector clustering and segmentation and in the next stage occlusion region is handled using motion vector steered video in-painting. This algorithm does not introduce one additional frame latency that is required for occlusion handling by other methods such as.