A new adaptive motion estimation algorithm is proposed in this paper. When compared with other fast search approaches, such as the H.264/AVC oriented EPZS algorithm, this algorithm significantly speeds up the motion estimation procedure and substantially decreases the memory requirements. Moreover, it also makes use of significantly fewer memory accesses, still maintaining its coding quality performances in what concerns both the obtained bit rate and PSNR. As a consequence, the proposed

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... hm proves to be specially adequate to be implemented in most embedded systems with restricted computational and power requirements that are often adopted by portable and battery supplied devices.