AV1 Motion Vector Fidelity and Application for Efficient Optical Flow

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zouein, Julien, Vibhoothi, Vibhoothi, Kokaram, Anil
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Zouein, Julien
Vibhoothi, Vibhoothi
Kokaram, Anil
author_facet Zouein, Julien
Vibhoothi, Vibhoothi
Kokaram, Anil
contents This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of motion vectors extracted from AV1-encoded video streams and their application in accelerating optical flow estimation. We demonstrate that motion vectors from AV1 video codec can serve as a high-quality and computationally efficient substitute for traditional optical flow, a critical but often resource-intensive component in many computer vision pipelines. Our primary contributions are twofold. First, we provide a detailed comparison of motion vectors from both AV1 and HEVC against ground-truth optical flow, establishing their fidelity. In particular we show the impact of encoder settings on motion estimation fidelity and make recommendations about the optimal settings. Second, we show that using these extracted AV1 motion vectors as a "warm-start" for a state-of-the-art deep learning-based optical flow method, RAFT, significantly reduces the time to convergence while achieving comparable accuracy. Specifically, we observe a four-fold speedup in computation time with only a minor trade- off in end-point error. These findings underscore the potential of reusing motion vectors from compressed video as a practical and efficient method for a wide range of motion-aware computer vision applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_17427
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AV1 Motion Vector Fidelity and Application for Efficient Optical Flow
Zouein, Julien
Vibhoothi, Vibhoothi
Kokaram, Anil
Image and Video Processing
Multimedia
This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of motion vectors extracted from AV1-encoded video streams and their application in accelerating optical flow estimation. We demonstrate that motion vectors from AV1 video codec can serve as a high-quality and computationally efficient substitute for traditional optical flow, a critical but often resource-intensive component in many computer vision pipelines. Our primary contributions are twofold. First, we provide a detailed comparison of motion vectors from both AV1 and HEVC against ground-truth optical flow, establishing their fidelity. In particular we show the impact of encoder settings on motion estimation fidelity and make recommendations about the optimal settings. Second, we show that using these extracted AV1 motion vectors as a "warm-start" for a state-of-the-art deep learning-based optical flow method, RAFT, significantly reduces the time to convergence while achieving comparable accuracy. Specifically, we observe a four-fold speedup in computation time with only a minor trade- off in end-point error. These findings underscore the potential of reusing motion vectors from compressed video as a practical and efficient method for a wide range of motion-aware computer vision applications.
title AV1 Motion Vector Fidelity and Application for Efficient Optical Flow
topic Image and Video Processing
Multimedia
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.17427