Block matching motion estimation algorithms have been developed for very different applications in image processing. In recent years, the variable block-size (VBS) motion estimation has been widely employed to improve the performance of the block matching algorithm. In this paper, we compare the performance of several variable block-size motion estimation algorithms based on merge and split procedures, and we propose a new algorithm based on the zoom effect. Many experiments results validate our procedure and illustrate the advantages and performance of our proposed algorithm compared to others. Our algorithm will be denoted here and after as: Zoom Motion Estimation (ZME).