Motion vector detecting device for compensating for movements in a motion picture

A device for obtaining a motion vector for a template block having pixels of Q rows and P columns in a current frame picture through a block matching processing on a search area of a predetermined size in a reference frame picture, said search area including a search window having the same width as that of the template block, and said p and Q each being an integer, comprising:

• linear arrays arranged in P columns, each said linear array including;
• Q/M cascaded processing elements each including a first data storage for storing M different pixel data of the template block, a second data storage for storing N different pixel data of the search window and calculation means for performing a predetermined calculation on the data stored in the first and second storage, where said N and M each are an integer and said N is an integer multiple of said M;
• and
• third data storage for storing R different data of the search area, a sum of said R and Q being equal to the number of pixels arranged on a column of said search area.

A device for obtaining a motion vector used in a motion compensated predictive coding through a block matching processing on a current frame picture and a reference frame picture, comprising:

• first storage for storing pixel data of a first template block in said current frame picture;
• second storage for storing pixel data of a second template block in the current frame picture;
• third storage for storing pixel data of a search window block in the reference frame picture associated with the first and second template blocks;
• estimation value producing means for performing a predetermined calculation both on the pixel data of the first storage and the pixel data of the third storage and on the pixel data of the second storage and the pixel data of the third storage, to produce estimation values indicating correlationships between the first template block and the search window block and between the second template block and the search window block, and
• means responsive to the estimation value producing means, for carrying out a detecting operation for detecting motion vectors for the first and second template blocks in parallel.

A device for detecting a motion vector through a block matching processing on a current frame picture and a reference frame picture, comprising:

• first storage provided for each pixel of a template block of the current frame picture, for storing corresponding pixel data;
• second storage provided for each pixel of a search window block of a search area of the reference frame picture, for storing corresponding pixel data;
• estimation means for performing a predetermined calculation on data of said first storage and data of said second storage to produce an estimation value data indicating correlationship between the template block and the search window block;
• and
• detecting means responsive to said estimation means for detecting a motion vector for the template block;
• said estimation means being operable to perform said calculation for each shifting of data by one pixel through said second storage while maintaining data in said first storage.

A device for detecting a motion vector through block matching processing on a current frame picture and a reference frame picture, comprising:

• a plurality of one way predictional motion detecting means each for detecting a motion vector of a template block in the current frame picture according to an estimation value obtained through the block matching processing on data of the template block and a search area in the reference frame picture, each said one-way predictional motion vector detecting means receiving data of different reference frame picture from others;
• a plurality of buffer storage provided corresponding to each said one way predictional motion vector detecting means, each for storing data of a partial reference picture related to the motion vector detected by a corresponding one-way predictional motion vector detecting means in the reference frame picture;
• interpolation means for receiving and combining the partial reference picture data from said plurality of buffer storage to produce data of interpolated reference picture;
• interpolated motion vector detecting means for performing the block matching processing on data of said template block and the interpolated reference picture to produce an estimation value indicating the result of the block matching processing;
• and
• determination means responsive to the estimation value of the interpolated motion vector detecting means and to estimation values related to the motion vectors from the plurality of one-way predictional motion detecting means, for producing a final motion vector from the motion vectors.

A method of obtaining a motion vector through a block matching processing on a current frame picture and a reference frame picture,

• storing data of a template block of the current frame picture in first storage elements;
• storing data of a search window block of the reference frame picture on second storage elements;
• performing a predetermined calculation on data stored in said first and second storage elements to generate an estimation value indicating correlationship between the template block and the search window block;
• shifting data through said second storage elements in a one-way direction to load data of another search window block in said second storage elements;
• repeating the steps of performing and shifting until all search window blocks in a search area related to said template block are subject to the estimation;
• and
• determining a motion vector according to the estimation values.