SELECTIVE PERCEPTUAL MASKING VIA SCALE SEPARATION IN THE SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL DOMAINS FOR USE IN DATA COMPRESSION WITH MOTION COMPENSATION

1 : An automated, computerized method for processing a video for motion estimation, comprising the steps of:

providing a video file depicting frames of a video, in a computer memory;

for a selected frame, estimating pixel motion relative to an adjacent frame of the video by building an image pyramid for each of the selected frame and the adjacent frame;

performing a block motion estimation technique at each level of the pyramids, with performance at a fine level of the pyramids being executed as a function of a motion estimation at a coarser level of the pyramids by centering a search neighborhood at a location in the fine level as predicted by a motion estimate from the coarser level; and

at a preselected number of levels in the pyramids, expanding a number of search neighborhoods to multiple locations in the fine level as predicted by motion estimates at multiple pre-selected locations in the coarser level.

2 : The method of claim 1 including the additional step of selecting a best result from among the number of search neighborhoods for the multiple pre-selected locations, as a motion estimate.

3 : The method of 1 including the further steps of:

scale separating the video file to generate a detail scale-separated video and a level scale-separated video corresponding to the video;

temporally blurring the detail scale-separated video to provide a filtered detail scale-separated video and spatially blurring the level scale-separated video to provide a filtered level scale-separated video;

combining the filtered detailed scale-separated video and the filtered level scale-separated video to provide an output video; and

outputting the output video for use in a data compression operation.

4 : A computer program product, disposed on a non-transitory computer readable media, the product including computer executable process steps operable to control a computer to:

provide a video file depicting frames of a video, in a computer memory,

for a selected frame, estimate pixel motion relative to an adjacent frame of the video by building an image pyramid for each of the selected frame and the adjacent frame;

perform a block motion estimation technique at each level of the pyramids, with performance at a fine level of the pyramids being executed as a function of a motion estimation at a coarser level of the pyramids by centering a search neighborhood at a location in the fine level as predicted by a motion estimate from the coarser level; and

at a preselected number of levels in the pyramids, expand a number of search neighborhoods to multiple locations in the fine level as predicted by motion estimates at multiple pre-selected locations in the coarser level.

5 : The computer program product of claim 4 including the additional process step of selecting a best result from among the number of search neighborhoods for the multiple pre-selected locations, as a motion estimate.

6 : The computer program product of claim 4 including the additional process steps of:

scale separating the video file to generate a detail scale-separated video and a level scale-separated video corresponding to the video;

temporally blurring the detail scale-separated video to provide a filtered detail scale-separated video and spatially blurring the level scale-separated video to provide a filtered level scale-separated video;

combining the filtered detailed scale-separated video and the filtered level scale-separated video to provide an output video; and

outputting the output video for use in a data compression operation.