Efficient interpolation and noise filtering for motion compensation in video coding

In this thesis, we propose a novel scheme for motion compensation in standard hybrid video coders to improve the rate-distortion performance. In the conventional approach, the motion compensated prediction is generated using motion vectors selected from a codebook. Our scheme, called filter codebook based motion compensation (FCMC), uses a codebook of motion vectors and a codebook of filters to generate the motion compensated prediction. The "motion filter" provides the functions of noise suppression and pixel interpolation, allowing motion compensation to be performed at arbitrary sub-pixel precision. The filter codebook is optimized for the coding of a target video sequence at a desired quantization step size. Incorporated into the standard ITU-T H.264/AVC video coder, the proposed scheme offers savings of about 7% in bit rate for the same reconstruction quality.