The refinement of a lower-pel resolution motion estimation vector is made more effective by preceding the actual refinement with a determination of a context out of a set of context candidates based on coding costs of a set of lower-pel resolution vectors within a neighborhood of the lower-pel resolution motion estimation vector, wherein each context candidate is associated with a ranking among a set of higher-pel resolution candidate vectors surrounding the lower-pel resolution motion estimation vector. The actual refinement of the lower-pel resolution motion estimation vector to obtain the higher-pel resolution motion estimation vector may thus use the ranking associated with the context determined: sequentially arranged accordingly, the set of higher-pel resolution candidate vectors may be tested sequentially.