A Scalable Multiple Description Scheme for 3D Video Coding Based on the Interlayer Prediction Structure

Lorenzo Favalli,Marco Folli

doi:10.1155/2010/425641

Abstract

The most recent literature indicates multiple description coding (MDC) as a promising coding approach to handle the problem of video transmission over unreliable networks with different quality and bandwidth constraints. Furthermore, following recent commercial availability of autostereoscopic 3D displays that allow 3D visual data to be viewed without the use of special headgear or glasses, it is anticipated that the applications of 3D video will increase rapidly in the near future. Moving from the concept of spatial MDC, in this paper we introduce some efficient algorithms to obtain 3D substreams that also exploit some form of scalability. These algorithms are then applied to both coded stereo sequences and to depth image-based rendering (DIBR). In these algorithms, we first generate four 3D subsequences by subsampling, and then two of these subsequences are jointly used to form each of the two descriptions. For each description, one of the original subsequences is predicted from the other one via some scalable algorithms, focusing on the inter layer prediction scheme. The proposed algorithms can be implemented as pre- and postprocessing of the standard H.264/SVC coder that remains fully compatible with any standard coder. The experimental results presented show that these algorithms provide excellent results.

Highlights

The research on stereoscopic video has received high interest over the past decade in order to provide viewers with more realistic vision than traditional 2D video
The most recent literature indicates multiple description coding (MDC) as a promising coding approach to handle the problem of video transmission over unreliable networks with different quality and bandwidth constraints
Other than using this left and right views, a more recent technique, known as depth image-based rendering (DIBR) [1], represents 3D video based on a monoscopic video and associated per-pixel depth information, called color image and depth map, respectively

Summary

Introduction

The research on stereoscopic video has received high interest over the past decade in order to provide viewers with more realistic vision than traditional 2D video. An MDC algorithm creates several substreams, all individually decodable, each at a lower quality than the original: receiving all the descriptions, ideally allows the full recovery of the single stream coded video [8, 9] This approach is very attractive since it is possible to exploit the inherent protection provided by path diversity among the different descriptions [10]. The main advantage of DIBR technique compared to traditional representation of 3D video with left-right views is that it provides high-quality 3D video with smaller bandwidth This is because the depth map can be coded more efficiently than the two streams of monoscopic views if correlations and properties of the depth map are properly identified. The quality of virtual views depends on the quality of received color and depth map

Multiple Descriptions Algorithms

Description of Scalable Coding Tools

Proposed Scheme

Results

Conclusions