Device and method for estimating the noise of a video signal

Device for estimating a noise level of a video signal representing image sequences comprising

• movement compensated interpolation means generating a movement compensated output signal,
• a recursive filter designed to receive on a first input the movement compensated output signal and on a second input the video signal, said recursive filter generating a video output signal, the video output signal being compensated by the movement compensated interpolation means to produce the movement compensated output signal,
• means of calculating a difference between the video signal and the movement compensated output signal,
• means of estimating the noise level of the video signal according to the calculated difference and a maximum threshold delimiting the calculated difference, wherein the means of estimating includes:
• a comparator for comparing each calculated difference to the maximum threshold;
• and
• an accumulator for accumulating the calculated differences that are less than the maximum threshold to produce an accumulated sum of differences used to estimate the noise level of the video signal according to the calculated difference and the maximum threshold.