Method to determine the motion vectors in small picture segments of a television picture.

摘要

There can be a wrong decision about the motion direction for a large number of pixels when motion vectors are found by the block matching method. A picture for which motion vectors are already determined by e.g. block matching, is according to the invention first preprocessed. The object is to increase the contrast in the picture and to make the form and contours of the surfaces clearly discernible. Then the picture is quantified in order to decrease the number of gray levels, and then the picture is filtered. The result is a picture comprising uniformly shaded segments of different sizes and forms. One block can contain several segments. Each segment gets a suitable motion vector of its own, taking into account the known motion vectors of the blocks.