1. A method comprising: reducing resolution of a reference frame and a target frame belonging to a sequence of video frames and producing a reduced resolution reference frame and a reduced resolution target frame; comparing a block of the reduced resolution reference frame, outlined by a sliding window, with a corresponding block in the reduced resolution target frame and identifying content included in both the reference frame and the target frame; determining a motion vector indicating direction of motion of the identified content between the reference target and target frame; adjusting the resolution of the reduced resolution reference frame and the reduced resolution target frame to adjusted resolutions and determining a location of the motion vector within the adjusted resolution reference frame; and forwarding the adjusted resolution target frame, the adjusted resolution reference frame, and the determined location of the motion vector within the adjusted reference frame to an encoder for use in encoding the sequence of video frames.