Patent ID: 8654846

Claim:
A motion compensator for performing motion compensation using image information of an input frame currently inputted and image information of any reference frame candidate among a plurality of reference frame candidates of input frames previously inputted, said motion compensator comprising: a global vector calculation unit configured to calculate a global vector indicating a first shift amount between temporally adjacent first and second frames of a plurality of input frames; a global vector storing unit configured to store, with regard to the plurality of input frames, information of a respectively corresponding plurality of global vectors calculated by said global vector calculation unit; an inter-frame motion calculation unit configured to calculate, for a desired reference frame candidate, a second shift amount between the input frame and the desired reference frame candidate, in accordance with a sum of global vectors; a reference frame determination unit configured to select, as a reference frame, the reference frame candidate for which the second shift amount is the smallest among the second shift amounts of the plurality of reference frame candidates; and a motion vector calculation unit configured to calculate a motion vector to perform the motion compensation, with regard to each image block that constitutes the input frame, based upon each image block that constitutes the reference frame.