Appeal No. 1997-2398
Application No. 08/354,929
Briefly, and in general terms, the invention pertains to
a method and apparatus for estimating movement in an image
produced by a video signal. The inventors of the instant
application have recognized that movement estimation can be
performed using only specific bits, for example, one or more
most significant bits (MSB) of the picture element values of a
video image. Picture element values (pixels) in a reference
block of a first video image stored in a first storage unit
are compared with corresponding pixels in a search zone block
of a second video image stored in a second storage unit. The
comparison of corresponding pixels is performed by gates G1-
G6, counters C1-C6 and a comparator. In accordance with the
principles of the invention, the pixel comparison is performed
using fewer bits than the number nominally used to represent
each pixel. For example, pixels nominally represented by 8
bits are compared using only the one or two MSBs. Based on
this truncated bit width pixel comparison, the comparator
determines the search zone block and reference block that
gives the highest correlation (i.e., the blocks with the
greatest similarity). Upon identifying the search zone block
and reference block providing the highest correlation, the
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