453 research outputs found
Loss-resilient Coding of Texture and Depth for Free-viewpoint Video Conferencing
Free-viewpoint video conferencing allows a participant to observe the remote
3D scene from any freely chosen viewpoint. An intermediate virtual viewpoint
image is commonly synthesized using two pairs of transmitted texture and depth
maps from two neighboring captured viewpoints via depth-image-based rendering
(DIBR). To maintain high quality of synthesized images, it is imperative to
contain the adverse effects of network packet losses that may arise during
texture and depth video transmission. Towards this end, we develop an
integrated approach that exploits the representation redundancy inherent in the
multiple streamed videos a voxel in the 3D scene visible to two captured views
is sampled and coded twice in the two views. In particular, at the receiver we
first develop an error concealment strategy that adaptively blends
corresponding pixels in the two captured views during DIBR, so that pixels from
the more reliable transmitted view are weighted more heavily. We then couple it
with a sender-side optimization of reference picture selection (RPS) during
real-time video coding, so that blocks containing samples of voxels that are
visible in both views are more error-resiliently coded in one view only, given
adaptive blending will erase errors in the other view. Further, synthesized
view distortion sensitivities to texture versus depth errors are analyzed, so
that relative importance of texture and depth code blocks can be computed for
system-wide RPS optimization. Experimental results show that the proposed
scheme can outperform the use of a traditional feedback channel by up to 0.82
dB on average at 8% packet loss rate, and by as much as 3 dB for particular
frames
Joint Reconstruction of Multi-view Compressed Images
The distributed representation of correlated multi-view images is an
important problem that arise in vision sensor networks. This paper concentrates
on the joint reconstruction problem where the distributively compressed
correlated images are jointly decoded in order to improve the reconstruction
quality of all the compressed images. We consider a scenario where the images
captured at different viewpoints are encoded independently using common coding
solutions (e.g., JPEG, H.264 intra) with a balanced rate distribution among
different cameras. A central decoder first estimates the underlying correlation
model from the independently compressed images which will be used for the joint
signal recovery. The joint reconstruction is then cast as a constrained convex
optimization problem that reconstructs total-variation (TV) smooth images that
comply with the estimated correlation model. At the same time, we add
constraints that force the reconstructed images to be consistent with their
compressed versions. We show by experiments that the proposed joint
reconstruction scheme outperforms independent reconstruction in terms of image
quality, for a given target bit rate. In addition, the decoding performance of
our proposed algorithm compares advantageously to state-of-the-art distributed
coding schemes based on disparity learning and on the DISCOVER
Distributed Representation of Geometrically Correlated Images with Compressed Linear Measurements
This paper addresses the problem of distributed coding of images whose
correlation is driven by the motion of objects or positioning of the vision
sensors. It concentrates on the problem where images are encoded with
compressed linear measurements. We propose a geometry-based correlation model
in order to describe the common information in pairs of images. We assume that
the constitutive components of natural images can be captured by visual
features that undergo local transformations (e.g., translation) in different
images. We first identify prominent visual features by computing a sparse
approximation of a reference image with a dictionary of geometric basis
functions. We then pose a regularized optimization problem to estimate the
corresponding features in correlated images given by quantized linear
measurements. The estimated features have to comply with the compressed
information and to represent consistent transformation between images. The
correlation model is given by the relative geometric transformations between
corresponding features. We then propose an efficient joint decoding algorithm
that estimates the compressed images such that they stay consistent with both
the quantized measurements and the correlation model. Experimental results show
that the proposed algorithm effectively estimates the correlation between
images in multi-view datasets. In addition, the proposed algorithm provides
effective decoding performance that compares advantageously to independent
coding solutions as well as state-of-the-art distributed coding schemes based
on disparity learning
Reducing 3D video coding complexity through more efficient disparity estimation
3D video coding for transmission exploits the Disparity Estimation (DE) to remove the inter-view redundancies present within both the texture and the depth map multi-view videos. Good estimation accuracy can be achieved by partitioning the macro-block into smaller subblocks partitions. However, the DE process must be performed on each individual sub-block to determine the optimal mode and their disparity vectors, in terms of ratedistortion efficiency. This vector estimation process is heavy on computational resources, thus, the coding computational cost becomes proportional to the number of search points and the inter-view modes tested during the rate-distortion optimization. In this paper, a solution that exploits the available depth map data, together with the multi-view geometry, is proposed to identify a better DE search area; such that it allows a reduction in its search points. It also exploits the number of different depth levels present within the current macro-block to determine which modes can be used for DE to further reduce its computations. Simulation results demonstrate that this can save up to 95% of the encoding time, with little influence on the coding efficiency of the texture and the depth map multi-view video coding. This makes 3D video coding more practical for any consumer devices, which tend to have limited computational power.peer-reviewe
High Performance Multiview Video Coding
Following the standardization of the latest video coding standard High Efficiency Video Coding in 2013, in 2014, multiview extension of HEVC (MV-HEVC) was published and brought significantly better compression performance of around 50% for multiview and 3D videos compared to multiple independent single-view HEVC coding. However, the extremely high computational complexity of MV-HEVC demands significant optimization of the encoder. To tackle this problem, this work investigates the possibilities of using modern parallel computing platforms and tools such as single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD) instructions, multi-core CPU, massively parallel GPU, and computer cluster to significantly enhance the MVC encoder performance. The aforementioned computing tools have very different computing characteristics and misuse of the tools may result in poor performance improvement and sometimes even reduction. To achieve the best possible encoding performance from modern computing tools, different levels of parallelism inside a typical MVC encoder are identified and analyzed. Novel optimization techniques at various levels of abstraction are proposed, non-aggregation massively parallel motion estimation (ME) and disparity estimation (DE) in prediction unit (PU), fractional and bi-directional ME/DE acceleration through SIMD, quantization parameter (QP)-based early termination for coding tree unit (CTU), optimized resource-scheduled wave-front parallel processing for CTU, and workload balanced, cluster-based multiple-view parallel are proposed. The result shows proposed parallel optimization techniques, with insignificant loss to coding efficiency, significantly improves the execution time performance. This , in turn, proves modern parallel computing platforms, with appropriate platform-specific algorithm design, are valuable tools for improving the performance of computationally intensive applications
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