Efficient Architecture for Variable Block Size Motion
Estimation in H.264/AVC
ACEEE International Journal of Signal and Image Processing, 5 (1):
9 (January 2014)Abstract
This paper proposes an efficient VLSI architecture
for the implementation of variable block size motion
estimation (VBSME). To improve the performance video
compression the Variable Block Size Motion Estimation
(VBSME) is the critical path. Variable Block Size Motion
Estimation feature has been introduced in to the H.264/AVC.
This feature induces significant complexities into the design
of the H.264/AVC video codec. This paper we compare the
existing architectures for VBSME. An efficient architecture
to improve the performance of Spiral Search for Variable Size
Motion Estimation in H.264/AVC is proposed. Among various
architectures available for VBSME spiral search provides
hardware friendly data flow with efficient utilization of
resources. The proposed implementation is verified using the
MATLAB on foreman, coastguard and train sequences. The
proposed Adaptive thresholding technique reduces the average
number of computations significantly with negligible effect
on the video quality. The results are verified using hardware
implementation on Xilinx Virtex 4 it was able to achieve real
time video coding of 60 fps at 95.56 MHz CLK frequency.