• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.9B no.2
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• pp.199-204
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• 2002

Since motion estimation and motion compensation methods remove the redundant data to employ the temporal redundancy in images, it plays an important role in digital video compression. Because of its high computational complexity, however, it is difficult to apply to high-resolution applications in real time environments. If we have information about the motion of an image block before the motion estimation, the location of a better starting point for the search of an exact motion vector can be determined to expedite the searching process. In this paper, we present an adaptive motion estimation approach bated on temporal correlations of consecutive image frames that defines the search pattern and determines the location of the initial search point adaptively. Through experiments, compared with DS(Diamond Search) algorithm, the proposed algorithm is about 0.1∼0.5(dB) better than DS in terms of PSNR(Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) and improves as high as 50% compared with DS in terms of average number of search point per motion vector estimation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.945-949
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• 2009

This paper proposes an enhanced motion estimation that is one of core parts affecting the coding performance and visual quality in video coding. Although the full search technique, which is the most basic method of the motion estimation, presents the best visual quality, its computational complexity is great, since the search procedures to find the best matched block with each block in the current frame are carried out for all points inside the search area. Thus, various fast algorithms to reduce the computational complexity and maintain good visual quality have been proposed. The PMVFAST adopted the MPEG-4 visual standard produces the visual quality near that by the full search technique with the reduced computational complexity. In this paper, we propose a new motion vector prediction method using median processing. The proposed method reduces the computational complexity for the motion estimation significantly. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is faster than the PMVFAST and better than the full search in terms of search speed and average PSNR, respectively.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.17-24
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• 2004

In this paper, the wavelet video coding using Low-Band-Shift(LBS) method and multiresolution motion estimation(MRME) is proposed. To overcome shift- variant property on wavelet coefficients, the LBS was proposed. LBS method previously has superior performance in terms of rate-distortion characteristic. However, this method needs more memory and computational complexity. Therefore to reduce computational complexity of video coding using LBS, we combine MRME with LBS. When mm is applied only, it has 7 times as much as existing method's motion vector because each subband has different motion vector using property of LBS, number of motion vector decreases. Proposed method decreases motion vector, and it decreases motion compensated Prediction error by detailed motion estimation. And then it shows better coding performance. Also this method reduces computational amount by smaller search area in higher resolution. The computational complexity of the proposed method is 12.1% of that of existing method at 3-level wavelet transform. The experimental results with the proposed method show about 0.2∼9.7% improvement of MAD performance in case of lossless coding, and 0.1∼2.0㏈ improvement of PSNR performance at 4he same bit rate in case of lossy coding.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.518-523
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• 2017

This paper proposes a novel denoising method based on non-local(NL) means. The NL-means algorithm is effective for removing an additive Gaussian noise, but the denoising parameter should be controlled depending on the noise level for proper noise elimination. Therefore, the proposed method optimizes the denoising parameter according to the noise levels. The proposed method consists of two processes: off-line and on-line. In the off-line process, the relations between the noise level and the denoising parameter of the NL-means filter are analyzed. For a given noise level, the various denoising parameters are applied to the NL-means algorithm, and then the qualities of resulting images are quantified using a structural similarity index(SSIM). The parameter with the highest SSIM is chosen as the optimal denoising parameter for the given noise level. In the on-line process, we estimate the noise level for a given noisy image and select the optimal denoising parameter according to the estimated noise level. Finally, NL-means filtering is performed using the selected denoising parameter. As shown in the experimental results, the proposed method accurately estimated the noise level and effectively eliminated noise for various noise levels. The accuracy of noise estimation is 90.0% and the highest Peak Signal-to-noise ratio(PSNR), SSIM value.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.58-66
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• 2009

Recently the emerging demands of the light-video encoder promotes lots of research efforts on DVC (Distributed Video Coding). As an appropriate video compression method, DVC has been studied, and Wyner-Ziv (WZ) video compression is its one representative structure. The WZ encoder splits the image into two kinds of frames, one is key frame which is compressed by conventional intra coding, and the other is WZ frame which is encoded by WZ coding. The WZ decoder decodes the key frame first, and estimates the WZ frame using temporal correlation between key frames. Estimated WZ frame (Side Information) cannot be the same as the original WZ frame due to the absence of the WZ frame information at decoder. As a result, the difference between the estimated and original WZ frames are regarded as virtual channel noise. The WZ frame is reconstructed by removing noise in side information. Therefore precise noise estimation produces good performance gain in WZ video compression by improving error correcting capability by channel code. But noise cannot be estimated precisely at WZ decoder unless there is good WZ frame information, and generally it is estimated from the difference of corresponding key frames. Also the estimated noise is limited by comparing with frame level noise to reduce the uncertainty of the estimation method. However these methods cannot provide good noise estimation for every frame or each bit plane. In this paper, we propose a noise nodel selection method which chooses a better noise model for each bit plane after generating candidate noise models. Experimental result shows PSNR gain up to 0.8 dB.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.16B no.2
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• pp.123-130
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• 2009

Motion estimation (ME) plays an important role in digital video compression. But it limits the performance of image quality and encoding speed and is computational demanding part of the encoder. To reduce computational time and maintain the image quality, integer pel and fractional pel ME methods are proposed in this paper. The proposed method for integer pel ME uses a hierarchical search strategy. This strategy method consists of symmetrical cross-X pattern, multi square grid pattern, diamond patterns. These search patterns places search points symmetrically and evenly that can cover the overall search area not to fall into the local minimum and to reduce the computational time. The proposed method for fractional pel uses full search pattern, center biased fractional pel search pattern and the proposed search pattern. According to block sizes, the proposed method for fractional pel decides the search pattern adaptively. Experiment results show that the speedup improvement of the proposed method over Unsymmetrical cross Multi Hexagon grid Search (UMHexagonS) and Full Search (FS) can be up to around $1.2{\sim}5.2$ times faster. Compared to image quality of FS, the proposed method shows an average PSNR drop of 0.01 dB while showing an average PSNR gain of 0.02 dB in comparison to that of UMHexagonS.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.138-145
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• 2018

In this paper, we propose a new motion estimation algorithm for frame rate up-conversion. The proposed algorithm uses the variance of errors in addition to SAD in motion estimation to find more accurate motion vectors. Then, it decides which motion vectors are wrong using the variance of neighbor motion vectors and the variance between current motion vector and neighbor's average motion vector. Next, incorrect motion vectors are corrected by weighted sum of eight neighbor motion vectors. Additionally, we propose adaptive search range algorithm, so we can find more accurate motion vectors and reduce computational complexity at the same time. As a result, proposed algorithm improves the average peak signal-to-noise ratio and structural similarity up to 1.44 dB and 0.129, respectively, compared with previous algorithms.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.303-310
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• 2007

Motion Estimation (ME) is a core part of most Video compression systems since it affects directly the output video quality and the encoding time. The most basic method of ME, Full Search (FS) gives the highest visual quality but also has the problem of significant computational load. To solve this problem, many fast algorithm has been proposed. Among them, MVFAST and PMVFAST show impressive results in video quality and the computational load by using the correlation between motion vectors of adjacent blocks. In particular, PMVFAST reduces search points dramatically and also gives very high video quality by using the median predictor. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm that uses the redefined median predictor which reduces the number of search points and yields a high visual quality by reducing the number of thresholds and early termination conditions.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.417-425
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• 2003

H.264, which is the latest video coding standard of both ITU-T(International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunication standardization sector) and MPEG(Moving Picture Experts Group), adopts new video coding tools such as variable block size motion estimation, multiple reference frames, quarter-pel motion estimation/compensation(ME/MC), 4${\times}$4 Integer DCT(Discrete Cosine Transform), and Rate-Distortion Optimization, etc. These new video coding tools provide good coding of efficiency compared with existing video coding standards as H.263, MPEG-4, etc. However, these new coding tools require the increase of encoder complexity. Therefore, in order to apply H.264 to many real applications, fast algorithms are required for H.264 coding tools. In this paper, when encoder MacroBlock(MB) mode is decided by rate-distortion optimization tool, fast mode decision algorithm by skipping variable block size ME/MC and spatial-predictive coding, which occupies most encoder complexity, is proposed. In terms of computational complexity, the proposed method runs about 4 times as far as JM(Joint Model) 42 encoder of H.264, while the PSNR(peak signal-to-noise ratio)s of the decoded images are maintained.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.742-744
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• 2005

본 논문에서는 인접 블록의 움직임 벡터를 이용한 움직임 예측 알고리즘을 제안하였다. 제안된 알고리즘은 두개의 탐색 단계로 구성된다. 첫 번째 단계는 인접 블록의 움직임 벡터를 이용한 탐색점에서 오차값이 제일 작은 위치를 초기 시작 위치로 사용하였다. 두 번째 단계는 첫 번째 단계에서 찾은 시작 위치에서 정확한 움직임 예측을 위한 패턴과 방법을 적용 하였다. 제안된 알고리즘은 움직임 벡터가 클 경우에 불필요한 탐색점 개수를 줄이고, 성능저하의 원인인 지역적 최소값(local minimum)에 빠질 위험을 감소시켰다. 제안된 알고리즘은 NTSS, 4SS, IDFS, ARPS와 비교 했으며, 성능면에서는 평균 PSNR이 $0.27\~2.56dB$향상되었고, 탐색점 개수면에서는 평균 27개 감소 하였다.