A system and method for adaptive motion filtering to improve subpel motion prediction efficiency of interframe motion compensated video coding is described. The technique uses a codebook approach that is efficient in search complexity to look-up best motion filter set from a pre-calculated codebook of motion filter coefficient set. In some embodiments, the search complexity is further reduced by partitioning the complete codebook into a small base codebook and a larger virtual codebook, such that the main calculations for search only need to be performed on the base codebook.