Patent ID: 8170102

Claim:
A method of selecting an inter mode for encoding a video macroblock, the method comprising the following steps: (a) defining a plurality of inter modes, each having a different length and width integer pixel count; (b) defining a first set of inter modes and a second set of inter modes utilizing all of said plurality of inter modes, wherein no inter node in said first set is smaller than any inter mode in said second set; (c) obtaining a measure of homogeneity of the largest inter mode in said first set; (d) IF said measure is not smaller than a predefined threshold, then performing integer motion estimation only on the inter modes in said first set and excluding said second set of inter modes from further processing in the encoding of said video macroblock, ELSE performing motion estimation only on the inter modes in said second set and excluding said first set of inter modes from further processing in the encoding of said video macroblock; (e) computing a rate distortion efficiency for the inter modes that are not discarded, and identifying the inter mode that renders the best rate distortion efficiency as the selected inter mode; (f) IF it is determined that sub-pixel motion estimation is to be applied in the encoding of the said video macroblock, then applying said sub-pixel motion estimation to only the selected inter mode.