Depth map coding with distortion estimation of rendered view
Wooshik Kim, Antonio J. Ortega, PoLin Lai, Dong Tian, Cristina Gomila · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2009
New data formats that include both video and the corresponding depth maps, such as multiview plus depth (MVD), enable new video applications in which intermediate video views (virtual views) can be generated using the transmitted/stored video views (reference views) and the corresponding depth maps as inputs. We propose a depth map coding method based on a new distortion measurement by deriving relationships between distortions in coded depth map and rendered view. In our experiments we use a codec based on H.264/AVC tools, where the rate-distortion (RD) optimization for depth encoding makes use of the new distortion metric. Our experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed method, with coding gains of up to 1.6 dB in interpolated frame quality as compared to encoding the depth maps using the same coding tools but applying RD optimization based on conventional distortion metrics.