Hierarchical motion-compensated frame interpolation based on the pyramid structure

Abstract

This paper presents a hierarchical motion-compensated frame interpolation (HMCFI) algorithm based on the pyramid structure for high-quality video reconstruction. Conversion between images having different frame rates produces motion jitter and blurring near moving object boundaries. To reduce degradation in video quality, the proposed algorithm performs motion estimation (ME) and motion-compensated frame interpolation (MCFI) at each level of the Gaussian/Laplacian image pyramids. In experiments, the frame rate of the progressive video sequence is up-converted by a factor of two and the performance of the proposed HMCFI algorithm is compared with that of conventional frame interpolation methods. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.