Stereo Coding with MVC

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation into the coding efficiency of the multiview video coding (MVC) extension of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264. MVC adds prediction among multiple views to the temporal motion compensation and prediction known as intercoding. Here, we consider the case of only two views or stereo coding. How much coding gain should we expect from the addition of inter-view coding to the motion-only coding of left and right-eye images? To answer this question, we examine fundamental qualitative and quantitative differences between temporal motion vectors and stereo disparity vectors. These differences are related to simple properties of the images themselves, and they affect the entire prediction stage and hence overall coding efficiency. Results suggest that the differences in the statistics of motion vectors compared to those of disparity vectors, along with the statistics of the resulting residuals, offers insight into the overall coding efficiencies currently observed in stereo coding.