Patent attributes
Both distortion rate and bit-rate can be considered together when selecting a lowest cost motion estimation signal. A motion estimation signal is generated for each of the candidate motion vectors and candidate mode information vectors for a macroblock. An estimated amount of encoding bits is determined for each of the candidate motion vectors, candidate mode information vectors, and quantized coefficients. A bit-rate is computed based on the estimated amount of encoding bits. In addition, a current macroblock is reconstructed with each of the candidate vectors, and distortion measured between each of the reconstructions and the current macroblock. A sum is computed for each distortion measurement and corresponding bit-rate. The lowest sum represents the lowest cost motion estimation signal.