A Method of Patch Merging for Atlas Construction in 3DoF+ Video Coding

MPEG-I Visual group is actively working on enhancing immersive experiences with up to six degree of freedom (6DoF). In virtual space of 3DoF+, which is defined as an extension of 360 video with limited changes of the view position in a sitting position, looking at the scene from another viewpoint (another position in space) requires rendering additional viewpoints using multiple videos taken at the different locations at the same time. In the MPEG-I Visual workgroup, methods of efficient coding and transmission of 3DoF+ video are being studied, and they released Test Model for Immersive Media (TMIV) recently. This paper presents the enhanced clustering method which can pack the patches into atlas efficiently in TMIV. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves significant BD-rate reduction in terms of various end-to-end evaluation methods.