Method and apparatus for fast motion estimation

A video encoder, comprising:

• an input for receiving a source frame;
• and
• a motion estimator for classifying a macroblock of the source frame into classes in accordance with an initial matching cost, an intermediate matching cost, and a final matching cost, where the intermediate matching cost is estimated based on a predicted motion vector for the source frame and the final matching cost is estimated based on a final motion vector for a correlated macroblock in a prior frame, where the motion estimator further performs motion estimation for the macroblock based upon the classifying and applies an early termination in accordance with a result of the classifying, wherein the classifying classifies the macroblock of the source frame into one of three potential classes and where the motion estimator outputs a motion vector for the macroblock based on a result of the motion estimation.