A New Approach to Video Format Conversion Using Bidirectional Motion Estimation and Hybrid Error Concealment

To display different image/video sources on different display systems, video format conversion techniques are needed. In this study, a new approach to video format conversion using bidirectional motion estimation and hybrid error concealment is proposed. In the proposed approach, both the spatial information and the temporal information within an image sequence are employed. In particular, the temporal information obtained by means of bidirectional motion estimation is used in both interlaced-to-progressive conversion and frame rate conversion. A hybrid “error” concealment method developed by Chu and Leou [19] is modified to interpolate the remaining (unfilled) pixels within each intermediate frame. Based on the simulation results obtained in this study, the performance of the proposed approach is shown through comparison to be superior to (more robust than) that of several existing approaches.