Reduced complexity motion estimation techniques: review and comparative study

Because of its high computational complexity, the process of motion estimation has become a bottleneck problem in many video applications, such as mobile video terminals and software-based video codecs. This has motivated the development of a number of fast motion estimation techniques. This paper briefly reviews reduced complexity motion estimation techniques and classifies them into five categories. It then presents the results of a comparative study across all categories. The aim of this study is to provide the reader with a feel of the relative performance of the categories, with particular attention to the important trade-off between computational complexity and prediction quality.