Patent ID: 8879631

Claim:
A method, comprising the steps of: for a set of frames that define a temporal window over a moving image sequence, accessing a motion estimate that describes a change to a region of a reference frame with respect to at least one frame, which is displaced within the set of frames from the reference frame over the temporal window; wherein the motion estimate comprises at least one pair of orthogonally related motion vector components that describe a translational motion associated with one or more of the regions between one or more of the frames of the set; wherein the regions of the reference frame and the at least one frame contain at least a portion of an image feature; and smoothing the motion estimate over the temporal window, comprising: for each pair of the at least one pair of orthogonally related motion vector components of the motion estimate, computing in response to confidence levels a smoothed value that corresponds to temporally smoothing the motion estimate, wherein the confidence level relates to a degree of accuracy of computing the motion estimate; and replacing the motion estimate over the temporal window with the smoothed values.