Automatic 3D video format detection

Abstract

Many 3D formats exist and will probably co-exist for a long time even if 3D standards are today under definition. The support for multiple 3D formats will be important for bringing 3D into home. In this paper, we propose a novel and effective method to detect whether a video is a 3D video or not, and to further identify the exact 3D format. First, we present how to detect those 3D formats that encode a pair of stereo images into a single image. The proposed method detects features and establishes correspondences between features in the left and right view images, and applies the statistics from the distribution of the positional differences between corresponding features to detect the existence of a 3D format and to identify the format. Second, we present how to detect the frame sequential 3D format. In the frame sequential 3D format, the feature points are oscillating from frame to frame. Similarly, the proposed method tracks feature points over consecutive frames, computes the positional differences between features, and makes a detection decision based on whether the features are oscillating. Experiments show the effectiveness of our method.