This paper proposes a two-stage global motion estimation method using a novel quadtree block-based motion estimation technique and an active mesh model.In the first stage,motion parameters are estimated by fitting block-based motion vectors computed using a new efficient quadtree technique,that divides a frame into equilateral triangle blocks using the quad-tree structure.Arbitrary partition shapes are achieved by allowing 4-to-1,3-to-1 and 2-1 merge/combine of sibling blocks ha ing the same motion vector .In the second stage,the mesh is constructed using an adaptive triangulation procedure that places more triangles over areas with high motion content,these areas are estimated during the first stage.finally the motion compensation is achieved by using a novel algorithm that is carried by both the encoder and the decoder to determine the optimal triangulation of the resultant partitions followed by affine mapping at the encoder.Computer simulation results show that the proposed method gives better performance that the conventional ones in terms of the peak signal-to-noise ration (PSNR)and the compression ratio (CR).