Floating polygon soup

International audienceThis paper presents a new representation called floating polygon soup for applications like 3DTV and FTV (Free Viewpoint Television). This representation is based on 3D polygons and takes as input MVD data. It extends the previously proposed polygon soup representation which is appropriate for both compression, transmission and rendering stages. The floating polygon soup conserves these advantages while also taking into account misalignments at the view synthesis stage due to modeling errors. The idea for reducing these misalignments is to morph the 3D geometry depending on the current viewpoint. Results show that artifacts in virtual views are reduced and objective quality is increased

Attention-Weighted Rate Allocation in Free-Viewpoint Television

Abstract-An architecture for free-viewpoint broadcast television transmission is proposed where all the views are transmitted at potentially different qualities and watched by a large number of viewers. The quality (or bit-rate) of each view is controlled by the distribution of viewpoints chosen by the viewers. For example, if most viewers are watching synthetic views in between views and , those views are allocated more transmission bits than views that are scarcely watched. We developed an attention-weighted bitrate-allocation method that is optimal in the total observer distortion sense. The optimality of the method relies on knowing the viewpoint probability distribution at every moment. Simulation results show that overall transmission rate can be reduced for the same total observed distortion

Chapter International Standardization of FTV

FTV (Free-viewpoint Television) is visual media that transmits all ray information of a 3D space and enables immersive 3D viewing. The international standardization of FTV has been conducted in MPEG. The first phase of FTV is multiview video coding (MVC), and the second phase is 3D video (3DV). The third phase of FTV is MPEG-FTV, which targets revolutionized viewing of 3D scenes via super multiview, free navigation, and 360-degree 3D. After the success of exploration experiments and Call for Evidence, MPEG-FTV moved MPEG Immersive project (MPEG-I), where it is in charge of video part as MPEG-I Visual. MPEG-I will create standards for immersive audio-visual services

Free Viewpoint Television: új perspektíva a 3D videó továbbításban

A mélységérzetet visszaadó képmegjelenítés hosszú múltra tekint vissza, hiszen az első 3D technikát, a színszűréses, más néven anaglif szemüveges módszert már több mint 160 éve, 1853-ban dolgozta ki Wilhelm Rollmann. Azóta számos eljárás és technológia látott napvilágot, melyek népszerűsége erősen ingadozott az évtizedek folyamán. Az elmúlt néhány évben az otthoni 3D TV-k elterjedésének lehettünk tanúi, azonban a kezdeti, erős marketinggel fűtött lelkesedés mára alábbhagyott. Igazán nagy áttörés tehát most sem született. A színszűrős módszert felváltotta a polárszűrős és aktívzáras megoldás, azonban a kényelmetlenséget jelentő szemüveg használata továbbra is nélkülözhetetlen. Az igazi, maradandó áttörés a 3D televíziózás területén akkor várható, ha sikerül szemüveg nélkül is mélységérzetet visszaadó képmegjelenítést megvalósítani. Hasonló folyamatokat láthattunk a mozi esetén is, azonban ott a szemüveg okozta kényelmetlenséget jobban tolerálják a nézők. A 3D megjelenítés tökéletesítése folyamatos motivációt ad a kutatóknak és a fejlesztőmérnököknek. Ma már megjelentek olyan szemüveg nélkül is nézhető 3D kijelzők prototípusai, mely reményeink szerint már valóban meghozzák az áttörést. Az új technológia a sokkamerás felvételeken és a tetszés szerint nézőpont előállításon alapul

Efficient depth image compression using accurate depth discontinuity detection and prediction

This paper presents a novel depth image compression algorithm for both 3D Television (3DTV) and Free Viewpoint Television (FVTV) services. The proposed scheme adopts the K-means clustering algorithm to segment the depth image into K segments. The resulting segmented image is losslessly compressed and transmitted to the decoder. The depth image is then compressed using a bi-modal block encoder, where the smooth blocks are predicted using direct spatial prediction. On the other hand, blocks containing depth discontinuities are approximated using a novel depth discontinuity predictor. The residual information is then compressed using a lossy compression strategy and transmitted to the receiver. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme outperforms the state of the art spatial video coding systems available today such as JPEG and H.264/AVC Intra. Moreover, the proposed scheme manages to outperform specialized depth image compression algorithms such as the one proposed by Zanuttigh and Cortelazzo.peer-reviewe

A joint motion & disparity motion estimation technique for 3D integral video compression using evolutionary strategy

3D imaging techniques have the potential to establish a future mass-market in the fields of entertainment and communications. Integral imaging, which can capture true 3D color images with only one camera, has been seen as the right technology to offer stress-free viewing to audiences of more than one person. Just like any digital video, 3D video sequences must also be compressed in order to make it suitable for consumer domain applications. However, ordinary compression techniques found in state-of-the-art video coding standards such as H.264, MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 are not capable of producing enough compression while preserving the 3D clues. Fortunately, a huge amount of redundancies can be found in an integral video sequence in terms of motion and disparity. This paper discusses a novel approach to use both motion and disparity information to compress 3D integral video sequences. We propose to decompose the integral video sequence down to viewpoint video sequences and jointly exploit motion and disparity redundancies to maximize the compression. We further propose an optimization technique based on evolutionary strategies to minimize the computational complexity of the joint motion disparity estimation. Experimental results demonstrate that Joint Motion and Disparity Estimation can achieve over 1 dB objective quality gain over normal motion estimation. Once combined with Evolutionary strategy, this can achieve up to 94% computational cost saving

The Internet and Democratic Debate

Presents findings from a survey conducted in June 2004. Looks at the role of the Internet in providing a wider awareness of political views during the 2004 campaign season

Cable Television, New Technologies and the First Amendment After Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. F.C.C.

From the moment it emerged as an independently viable communications medium, the cable television industry has been forced to operate within the shadow of regulatory oversight. With passage of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992,\u27 and judicial endorsement of much of that legislation in Turner BroadcastingSystem, Inc. v. F.C.C., cable\u27s future rests squarely in the hands of the federal government. Congress, with some help from the Supreme Court, has made it clear that any blueprints for the future of the nation\u27s communications infrastructure will have to pass through Washington. This article is divided into four parts. Part I explains the Turner decision and its major holdings. Part II looks at an important macro-level aspect of the decision-the Court\u27s search for a regulatory model for cable television. Parts III and IV focus more on the micro-level consequences of the Court\u27s decision