Patent ID: 6956898

Claim:
A method for encoding an image sequence, the method comprising the steps of: generating an estimate of apparent motion within the image sequence utilizing a dense motion field of a portion of the image sequence, wherein the estimate comprises a plurality of motion vectors each corresponding to an element of the dense motion field, and is generated at least in part as a constrained function of a characterization of motion between elements of the dense motion field and elements of one or more other portions of the image sequence; and utilizing the estimate to perform motion compensation on at least one of the images of the image sequence; wherein the constrained function comprises a first maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation problem with a constraint on the entropy of the desired estimate; and wherein the generating step further includes the step of transforming the constrained function into a second MAP estimation problem having at least one parameter uniquely determined by the entropy constraint wherein the entropy constraint is determined by an amount of bandwidth available for encoding the image sequence.