METHOD AND DEVICE FOR ESTIMATION OF MOTIONS OF IMAGE PORTIONS FOR MOVING IMAGE COMPRESSION CIRCUITS

The present invention relates to a method and device for estimation of the motion of a macroblock of pixels of a current image with respect to a reference window taken in a preceding image, including, in a first step, determining the cumulated distortion of the pixels of the current macroblock for a null motion vector in the reference window; choosing, as the motion vector of the current macroblock, the null vector if the distortion is lower than or equal to a first threshold; and otherwise choosing, in a second step, a vector for which the current macroblock exhibits a minimum distortion with respect to a macroblock of the reference window.