In all kinds of digital video processing algorithms, motion compensated algorithm can acquire perfect performance because the motion information in the video signal has been considered. The hardware implementation of the motion estimator is the core of the various motion compensated digital video processings, which will be applied in real systems. Block-matching motion estimating algorithm is widely used in real system because of its low computing complication, easy realization and high call frequency of the block-matching criterion in the hardware systems. A new criterion called weighted minimized maximum error is proposed in this paper. This criterion can reduce the complexity of the motion estimator, decrease the area of the hardware and increase the speed of the hardware. On the other hand, the criterion is suitable to be applied to the recursive searching strategy which has an inherent weakness called error propagation.