Patent ID: 7450768
Filing Date: 2008-11-11
Classification: G06T,H04N

Abstract:
1. A motion estimation apparatus, comprising: a first unit configured to select one of a plurality of sub-blocks in high-frequency sub-bands of each of one or more blocks into which each of frames of interlaced images forming a moving image is divided, the frames being hierarchically compressed and encoded into code stream data by performing discrete wavelet transform on pixel values of each of the blocks; a second unit configured to calculate an amount of codes of each of 1LH and 1HL components of the selected one of the sub-blocks and to calculate the ratio of the amount of codes of the 1LH component to the amount of codes of the 1HL component; a third unit configured to compare the calculated ratio with a threshold and to estimate that motion in the selected one of the sub-blocks is high-speed if the calculated ratio is greater than the threshold and that the motion in the selected one of the sub-blocks is low-speed if the calculated ratio is less than or equal to the threshold; a fourth unit configured to calculate a number of the sub-blocks in which the motion is estimated to be high-speed and a total number of the sub-blocks in each of the frames, and to calculate a ratio of the number of the sub-blocks of the high-speed motion to the total number of the sub-blocks with respect to each of the frames; and a fifth unit configured to compare the calculated ratio with a threshold and to estimate that motion in the corresponding frame is high-speed if the calculated ratio is greater than the threshold and that the motion in the corresponding frame is low-speed if the calculated ratio is less than or equal to the threshold.