SenseCoding: accelerometer-assisted motion estimation for efficient video encoding

Guangming Hong, Ahmad Rahmati, Ye Wang, Lin Zhong

Abstract: Accelerometers have appeared on many camcorders, cameras and mobile phones. We present algorithms that estimate camera movement from accelerometer readings and apply the estimation to significantly improve the compute-intense motion estimation in video encoding. We have implemented a working prototype that simultaneously captures video and three-axis acceleration data. The video is then compressed with a reference MPEG-2 encoder, modified to incorporate the accelerometer readings to assist motion estimation. Our experimental data shows a two to three times speed improvement for the entire encoding process, in comparison with full search.