HIERARCHICAL MOTION VECTOR DETECTION METHOD

摘要

PURPOSE:To reduce the arithmetic operation quantity without deteriorating detection accuracy even when a frame interval is wide by using telescopic retrieval on a minimum reduced picture generated from a luminance signal of an input picture so as to obtain a motion vector. CONSTITUTION:Picture signals 4, 19 of a current frame and an intermediate frame are reduced into a prescribed size and a small area divider is used to divide the signals into plural blocks and to generate reduced pictures 53, 56 from a 1st layer till a C layer and they are outputted to a matching error calculation section 67 and block address signals 60, 63 are outputted to a comparator 69. Then the telescopic retrieval is used to detect a motion vector on a reduced picture of the C layer whose size is least and a motion vector is detected on a reduced picture of a (C-1) layer as an initial value. The process is repeated to obtain a motion vector finally between a current picture and a reference picture not continuous timewise. Thus, even when a frame interval is wide, the motion vector is detected with less calculation quantity.