Predictive fast motion/disparity search for multiview video coding

We consider the problem of complexity reduction in motion/disparity estimation for multiview video coding. We propose predictive fast search algorithms that, after either the motion field or the disparity field has been estimated, obtain with low complexity a good set of candidate vectors for the other field. The proposed scheme performs predictive motion search from view to view and predictive disparity search from one time instant to another time. We also propose an efficient search pattern that starts with the candidate vectors from the proposed algorithms. Simulation results show a very significant reduction in encoding complexity with slight coding efficiency degradation as compared to the full search in both motion and disparity estimations.