Motion compensation for video compression using control grid interpolation

A new class of motion compensation methods that are based on control grid interpolation (CGI) for use in video compression is described. The predominant motion compensation method, block matching, is shown to be a special case of CGI. A new CGI method is presented that produces a smooth motion vector field, preserving continuity and connectivity in the prediction image. When contrasted with block matching, the new algorithm eliminates blocking artifacts while using the same or less side information for approximately the same mean square error. Search algorithms and coding methods developed previously for block matching can be used with this new technique.>