Compressed domain global motion estimation using the Helmholtz Tradeoff Estimator

Several algorithms for global motion estimation in video sequences using pixel- or block-based approaches have been published. Most known pixel-based methods lack in performance while when using block-based algorithms working on motion vectors, robustness to outliers and accuracy is missing. In this paper we present the fundamentals of a significantly improved, robust block-based method for global motion estimation in compressed domain following the generic Helmholtz principle. To this aim, we use motion vector fields as provided by MPEG data streams. Background PSNR values for four motion compensated test sequences show that our new method delivers results comparable to more complex algorithms.