Fast quarter-pixel motion estimation algorithm for H.264/AVC

A fast quarter-pixel motion estimation algorithm was proposed. which is based on mathematical models of the motion compensated prediction errors. Different from conventional quarter-pixel accuracy hierarchical motion estimation algorithm, the proposed algorithm can avoid fractional-pixel interpolation and subsequent fractional-pixel search after integer-pixel accuracy motion estimation. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm greatly reduces the computational complexity of quarter-pixel motion estimation, while keeping the nearly equal quality of the image.