Global motion-compensated preprocessing algorithm for block-based frame-rate conversion

We propose a global motion (GM) compensated preprocessing algorithm for block-based frame rate conversion (FRC). The proposed method estimates camera motions such as zooms or rotations between two input frames, and accordingly, produces nontranslational GM-free pictures by performing GM compensation with respect to the temporal location where the FRC method reconstructs an intermediate frame. To reduce the computational load, the proposed method first subsamples input images, and then blockwise motion estimation (ME) is performed. With the ME results, the proposed method detects scene changes and nontranslational GMs. This allows us to determine whether to proceed with the GM estimation and compensation processes. The geometric motion model is adopted to describe camera motions with four parameters, and these values are iteratively found on a motion vector (MV) field.Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves significant performance improvements of subsequent FRC methods.