Patent ID: 7251279

Claim:
An apparatus of motion estimation and mode decision, comprising: a candidate vector group generation unit generating a candidate vector group comprising a motion vector of an adjacent image crossing a first macro block, wherein the first macro block is a macro block of an image before scaling, and the first macro block and the adjacent image exist in a same sub-group of a picture (sub-GOP); a motion vector estimation unit estimating a base vector of a second macro block from the motion vector and the candidate vector group of the first macro block overlapped with the second macro block, wherein the second macro block is a macro block of the image after scaling; and a mode decision unit determining a mode of the second macro block from the estimated base vector and a mode of the first macro block, wherein, in accordance with a type of the image, the motion vector estimation unit calculates a sum of an absolute difference (SAD) according to the motion vector and the candidate vector group of the first macro block overlapped with the second macro block, and estimates a motion vector having a minimum SAD to be the base vector of the second macro block, and wherein the mode decision unit determines the second macro block to be an intra mode when a portion of the intra mode in the first macro block overlapped with the second macro block is above a predetermined value, and determines the second macro block to be an inter mode when the portion of the intra mode in the first macro block overlapped with the second macro block is below the predetermined value.