Motion-compensated interpolation for scan rate up-conversion

There are two kinds of scan rate up-conversion for a cinematic sequence: frame-based motion-compensated interpolation and field-based scan rate up-conversion. The latter deinterlaces every field in an interlaced sequence which can be displayed using a progressive format or interlaced format to double the field rate. This paper proposes a new frame-based interpolation method that consists of segmentation and interpolation modules. The first module divides the difference between two successive frames into changed and unchanged regions. Each changed region is further differentiated into moving objects, covered, and uncovered regions. The second module generates the intermediate frames by using the direct motion-based interpolation method and indirect motion-based interpolation method to fill the changed regions, and the forward/ backward insertion method to fill the covered and uncovered regions. The proposed interpolation method can deal with the interframe zooming effect as well as the object-background ambiguity problem. Finally, it is shown that this new method is computationally simpler than the other frame interpolation methods and the interpolated frames are qualitatively and quantitatively better than results obtained with the other methods.