Video-image-interpolation apparatus and method for adaptive motion-compensated frame interpolation

A video-image-interpolation apparatus, comprising:

• at least three image-layering circuits, each image-layering circuit performing a corresponding image-layering process on each image and its subsequent image in an input video signal to generate a first image layer and a first subtitle layer corresponding to each image and to generate a second image layer and a second subtitle layer corresponding to the subsequent image;
• at least three motion-estimation circuits, each motion-estimation circuit obtaining a reference image-layer sequence and a reference subtitle-layer sequence according to the first image layer and the first subtitle layer corresponding to each image, and obtaining the second image layer and the second subtitle layer corresponding to the subsequent image generated by each image-layering process, wherein the reference image-layer sequence and the reference subtitle-layer sequence has an original frame rate,
• wherein each motion-estimation circuit performs motion estimation on each reference-image layer and its subsequent reference-image layer in the reference image-layer sequence to obtain a first motion vector corresponding to each block in each reference-image layer, and performs motion estimation on each reference-subtitle layer and its subsequent reference-subtitle layer in the reference subtitle-layer sequence to obtain a second motion vector corresponding to each block in each reference-subtitle layer;
• a motion-estimation-filtering circuit, adaptively determining the first motion vector of each block in each reference-image layer and the second motion vector of each block in each reference-subtitle layer, that are generated by the motion-estimation circuit having the smallest motion error;
• a motion-compensated frame-interpolation circuit, performing a motion-compensation process, according to the first motion vector of each block in each reference-image layer and the second motion vector of each block in each reference-subtitle layer, to generate one or more interpolated image-layer images between each reference-image layer and its subsequent reference-image layer, and to generate one or more interpolated subtitle-layer images between each reference-subtitle layer and its subsequent reference-subtitle layer,
• wherein the motion-compensated frame-interpolation circuit superimposes the reference image-layer sequence and the reference subtitle-layer sequence to generate a plurality of reference images, and superimposes the one or more interpolated image-layer images and the one or more interpolated subtitle-layer images to generate one or more interpolated images;
• and
• a display-control circuit, performing a frame-rate-conversion process on the reference images and the interpolated images according to the original frame rate and a display frame rate of an output video signal displayed by the video-image-interpolation apparatus to obtain the output video signal, wherein the display frame rate is higher than or equal to the original frame rate.