A Low-Complex Frame Rate Up-Conversion with Edge-Preserved Filtering

Abstract

The improvement of resolution of digital video requires a continuous increase of computation invested into Frame Rate Up-Conversion (FRUC). In this paper, we combine the advantages of Edge-Preserved Filtering (EPF) and Bidirectional Motion Estimation (BME) in an attempt to reduce the computational complexity. The inaccuracy of BME results from the existing similar structures in the texture regions, which can be avoided by using EPF to remove the texture details of video frames. EPF filters out by the high-frequency components, so each video frame can be subsampled before BME, at the same time, with the least accuracy degradation. EPF also preserves the edges, which prevents the deformation of object in the process of subsampling. Besides, we use predictive search to reduce the redundant search points according to the local smoothness of Motion Vector Field (MVF) to speed up BME. The experimental results show that the proposed FRUC algorithm brings good objective and subjective qualities of the interpolated frames with a low computational complexity.