Patent ID: 6195389
Filing Date: 2001-02-27
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
A method for determining whether a candidate region is to be considered as a predictor region, wherein the predictor region is used in estimating motion of a current region in a current picture of a sequence of digitally-represented pictures relative to a predictor region in a reference picture of the sequence, the method including the steps of:determining motion vectors for a plurality of proximate regions that are proximate to the current region, the plurality of proximate regions including regions that are in the current picture and in a last encoded picture;locating the candidate regions by applying the motion vectors from the proximate regions to the region in the reference picture that has the same spatial position in the reference picture that the current region has in the current picture;comparing pixel information for the candidate region with pixel information in the current region; anddetermining whether a match between the pixel information in the candidate region and the pixel information in the current region satisfies a first threshold and if so the candidate region is to be considered as the predictor region, otherwise comparing pixel information for regions in an area centered on the candidate region with pixel information in the current region to determine the predictor region, wherein the area centered on the candidate region is non-rectangular and dynamically sized according to a number of processor cycles available in a processor cycle budget to perform the computation.