• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.6 no.4
• /
• pp.1128-1139
• /
• 2012

With the development of three-dimensional display and related technologies, depth video coding becomes a new topic and attracts great attention from industries and research institutes. Because (1) the depth video is not a sequence of images for final viewing by end users but an aid for rendering, and (2) depth video is simpler than the corresponding color video, fast algorithm for depth video is necessary and possible to reduce the computational burden of the encoder. This paper proposes a fast mode decision algorithm for depth video coding based on depth segmentation. Firstly, based on depth perception, the depth video is segmented into three regions: edge, foreground and background. Then, different mode candidates are searched to decide the encoding macroblock mode. Finally, encoding time, bit rate and video quality of virtual view of the proposed algorithm are tested. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm save encoding time ranging from 82.49% to 93.21% with negligible quality degradation of rendered virtual view image and bit rate increment.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.1730-1747
• /
• 2018

Multi-view video plus depth (MVD) is a mainstream format of 3D scene representation in free viewpoint video systems. The advanced 3D extension of the high efficiency video coding (3D-HEVC) standard introduces new prediction tools to improve the coding performance of depth video. However, the depth video in 3D-HEVC is time consuming. To reduce the complexity of the depth video inter coding, we propose a fast coding unit (CU) size and mode decision algorithm. First, an off-line trained Bayesian model is built which the feature vector contains the depth levels of the corresponding spatial, temporal, and inter-component (texture-depth) neighboring largest CUs (LCUs). Then, the model is used to predict the depth level of the current LCU, and terminate the CU recursive splitting process. Finally, the CU mode search process is early terminated by making use of the mode correlation of spatial, inter-component (texture-depth), and inter-view neighboring CUs. Compared to the 3D-HEVC reference software HTM-10.0, the proposed algorithm reduces the encoding time of depth video and the total encoding time by 65.03% and 41.04% on average, respectively, with negligible quality degradation of the synthesized virtual view.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.149-157
• /
• 2015

The 3D-AVC standard aims at improving coding efficiency by applying new techniques for utilizing intra, inter and view predictions. 3D video scenes are rendered with existing texture video and additional depth map. The depth map comes at the expense of increased computational complexity of the encoding process. For real-time applications, reducing the complexity of 3D-AVC is very important. In this paper, we present a fast intra mode decision algorithm to reduce the complexity burden in the 3D video system. The proposed algorithm uses similarity between texture video and depth map. The best intra prediction mode of the depth map is similar to that of the corresponding texture video. The early decision algorithm can be made on the intra prediction of depth map coding by using the coded intra mode of texture video. Adaptive threshold for early termination is also proposed. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm saves the encoding time on average 29.7% without any significant loss in terms of the bit rate or PSNR value.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
• /
• 2005.11a
• /
• pp.549-552
• /
• 2005

This paper presents a 3D video content generation technique and system that uses the multi-view images and the depth map. The proposed uses 3-view video and depth inputs from the 3-view video camera and depth camera for the 3D video content production. Each camera is calibrated using Tsai's calibration method, and its parameters are used to rectify multi-view images for the multi-view stereo matching. The depth and disparity maps for the center-view are obtained from both the depth camera and the multi-view stereo matching technique. These two maps are fused to obtain more reliable depth map. Obtained depth map is not only used to insert a virtual object to the scene based on the depth key, but is also used to synthesize virtual viewpoint images. Some preliminary test results are given to show the functionality of the proposed technique.

• ETRI Journal
• /
• v.36 no.2
• /
• pp.242-252
• /
• 2014

Since July of 2012, the 3D video extension of H.264/AVC has been under development to support the multi-view video plus depth format. In 3D video applications such as multi-view and free-view point applications, synthesized views are generated using coded texture video and coded depth video. Such synthesized views can be distorted by quantization noise and inaccuracy of 3D wrapping positions, thus it is important to improve their quality where possible. To achieve this, the relationship among the depth video, texture video, and synthesized view is investigated herein. Based on this investigation, an edge noise suppression filtering process to preserve the edges of the depth video and a method based on a total variation approach to maximum a posteriori probability estimates for reducing the quantization noise of the coded texture video. The experiment results show that the proposed methods improve the peak signal-to-noise ratio and visual quality of a synthesized view compared to a synthesized view without post processing methods.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.12 no.12
• /
• pp.1-13
• /
• 2012

3D video is regarded as the next generation contents in numerous applications. The 2D-to-3D video conversion technologies are strongly required to resolve a lack of 3D videos during the period of transition to the full ripe 3D video era. In 2D-to-3D conversion methods, after the depth image of each scene in 2D video is estimated, stereoscopic video is synthesized using DIBR (Depth Image Based Rendering) technologies. This paper proposes a novel depth fusion algorithm that integrates multiple depth cues contained in 2D video to generate stereoscopic video. For the proper depth fusion, it is checked whether some cues are reliable or not in current scene. Based on the result of the reliability tests, current scene is classified into one of 4 scene types and scene-adaptive depth fusion is applied to combine those reliable depth cues to generate the final depth information. Simulation results show that each depth cue is reasonably utilized according to scene types and final depth is generated by cues which can effectively represent the current scene.

• International Journal of Contents
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.9-16
• /
• 2014

Depth-image-based rendering is generally used in real-time 2D-to-3D conversion for 3DTV. However, inaccurate depth maps cause flickering issues between image frames in a video sequence, resulting in eye fatigue while viewing 3DTV. To resolve this flickering issue, we propose a new 2D-to-3D conversion scheme based on fast and robust depth-map generation from a 2D video sequence. The proposed depth-map generation algorithm divides an input video sequence into several cuts using a color histogram. The initial depth of each cut is assigned based on a hypothesized depth-gradient model. The initial depth map of the current frame is refined using color and motion information. Thereafter, the depth map of the next frame is updated using the difference image to reduce depth flickering. The experimental results confirm that the proposed scheme performs real-time 2D-to-3D conversions effectively and reduces human eye fatigue.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.14 no.7
• /
• pp.3018-3038
• /
• 2020

In the stereoscopic or multiview display, the depth video illustrates visual distances between objects and camera. To promote the computational efficiency of depth video encoder, we exploit the intra prediction of depth videos under Versatile Video Coding (VVC) and observe a diverse distribution of intra prediction modes with different coding unit sizes. We propose a hybrid scheme to further boost fast depth video coding. In the first stage, we adaptively predict the HADamard (HAD) costs of intra prediction modes and initialize a candidate list according to the HAD costs. Then, the candidate list is further improved by considering the probability distribution of candidate modes with different CU sizes. Finally, early termination of CU splitting is performed at each CU depth level based on the Bayesian theorem. Our proposed method is incorporated into VVC intra prediction for fast coding of depth videos. Experiments with 7 standard sequences and 4 Quantization parameters (Qps) validate the efficiency of our method.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.31-39
• /
• 2015

2D-to-3D video conversion vests 3D effects in a 2D video by generating stereoscopic views using depth cues inherent in the 2D video. This technology would be a good solution to resolve the problem of 3D content shortage during the transition period to the full ripe 3D video era. In this paper, a low-complexity depth generation method for 2D-to-3D video conversion is presented. For temporal consistency in global depth, a pattern-based depth generation method is newly introduced. A low-complexity refinement algorithm for local depth is also provided to improve 3D perception in object regions. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms conventional methods in terms of complexity and subjective quality.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.43-51
• /
• 2014

Multi-view video including depth image is necessary to develop a new compression encoding technique for storage and transmission, because of a huge amount of data. Layered depth image is an efficient representation method of multi-view video data. This method makes a data structure that is synthesis of multi-view color and depth image. This efficient method to compress new contents is suggested to use layered depth image representation and to apply for video compression encoding by using 3D warping. This paper proposed enhanced compression method using layered depth image representation and H.264/AVC video coding technology. In experimental results, we confirmed high compression performance and good quality of reconstructed image.