High speed motion estimating method for real time moving image coding and apparatus therefor

Abstract

A method for estimation of a motion image and an apparatus therefor are provided. The motion estimating method includes the steps of (a) providing layer 1 by reducing the resolution of layer 0 and providing layer 2 by reducing the resolution of layer 1, wherein the layer 0 is an input image frame, (b) calculating a mean absolute difference (MAD) with respect to a search region of the layer 2, (c) determining at least two positions in which the MAD calculated in the step (b) is minimized as initial search center points in the layer 1, (d) further determining at least one initial search center points in the layer 1 using a correlation of neighborhood blocks of a current block, (e) calculating a MAD with respect to search regions using the initial search center points as a center in the layer 1, (f) selecting a position in which the MAD calculated in the step (e) is minimized as the search center point in the layer 0, (g) calculating a MAD with respect to a search region using the initial search center points selected in the step (f) as a center in the layer 0, and (h) determining a final motion vector from information on the distance between the position in which the MAD calculated in the step (g) and the origin. It is possible to motion-estimate at a high speed by remarkably reducing the complexity with almost no reduction in the performance compared to that of a full scale block matching analysis (FSBMA).