Multiview Coding

In the next years three-dimensional applications will be the next development in visual home entertainment experience. With recent development of 3D displays and interactive applications, 3D applications have become a point of interest by academics and industries. To enable 3D applications complemental information of the 3D scene are required, such as video captured from differents viewpoints and one corresponding depth map for each viewpoint. With the depth information, 3D applications such as free view point video (interpolating data from actual cameras by means of depth-image-based rendering (DIBR) techniques) can be produced.

The encoding of depth maps of a large number of captured views leads to a high transmision cost. Several solutions for Multi-View Video coding have been proposed, both with and without temporal prediction.