A method of estimating and compensating for jitter between two video frames in a digital video sequence comprises comparing a pixel subset in one video frame to candidate matching pixel subsets within a search area in the other video frame to obtain a preliminary matching pixel subset. Based on the location of the preliminary matching pixel subset, an adapted search area is formed and the comparing is continued within the adapted search area to obtain a final matching pixel subset. Motion is calculated between the video frames based on the final match thereby to estimate the jitter. The video frames are then transformed based on the estimated jitter.