We propose an algorithm for large displacement opti-
cal flow estimation which does not require the commonly
used coarse-to-fine warping strategy. It is based on a
quadratic relaxation of the optical flow functional which
decouples data term and regularizer in such a way that the
non-linearized variational problem can be solved by an al-
ternation of two globally optimal steps, one imposing op-
timal data consistency, the other imposing discontinuity-
preserving regularity of the flow field. Experimental results
confirm that the proposed algorithmic implementation out-
performs the traditional warping strategy, in particular for
the case of large displacements of small scale structures.