Generally, moving images contain the various components in motions, which reange from a static object and background to a fast moving object. To extract the accurate motion parameters, we must consider the various motions. That requires a wide search egion in motion estimation. The wide search, however, causes a high computational complexity. If we have a few knowledge about the motion direction and magnitude before motion estimation, we can determine the search location and search window size using the already-known information about the motion. In this paper, we present a local adaptive motion estimation approach that predicts a block motion based on spatio-temporal neighborhood blocks and adaptively defines the search location and search window size. This paper presents a technique for reducing computational complexity, while having high accuracy in motion estimation. The proposed algorithm is introduced the forward and backward projection techniques. The search windeo size for a block is adaptively determined by previous motion vectors and prediction errors. Simulations show significant improvements in the qualities of the motion compensated images and in the reduction of the computational complexity.