A new approach to slow motion effect for digital TV broadcasting services

Slow motion replay of video sequences is a commercial feature for home video players, but also a special effect used in video production. At present, most techniques to perform digital slow motion are based on interpolation for generating additional intermediate frames. Mainly, interpolation is done through linear or cubic spline functions or by motion estimation/compensation applied either pixel by pixel, or by partitioning frames into blocks. This approach has drawbacks: above all, interpolation bears to fading effects. Purpose of this paper is to present a novel technique combining fractals and wavelets to obtain higher performance in slow motion display of digital video sequences. Active scene detection and video processing are used to reduce computational cost and improve visual quality. This method produces better results in terms of objective perceptual video quality comparing to state-of-the-art techniques.