Navigation domain representation for interactive multiview imaging

Enabling users to interactively navigate through different viewpoints of a static scene is a new interesting functionality in 3D streaming systems. While it opens exciting perspectives towards rich multimedia applications, it requires the design of novel representations and coding techniques in order to solve the new challenges imposed by interactive navigation. Interactivity clearly brings new design constraints: the encoder is unaware of the exact decoding process, while the decoder has to reconstruct information from incomplete subsets of data since the server can generally not transmit images for all possible viewpoints due to resource constrains. In this paper, we propose a novel multiview data representation that permits to satisfy bandwidth and storage constraints in an interactive multiview streaming system. In particular, we partition the multiview navigation domain into segments, each of which is described by a reference image and some auxiliary information. The auxiliary information enables the client to recreate any viewpoint in the navigation segment via view synthesis. The decoder is then able to navigate freely in the segment without further data request to the server; it requests additional data only when it moves to a different segment. We discuss the benefits of this novel representation in interactive navigation systems and further propose a method to optimize the partitioning of the navigation domain into independent segments, under bandwidth and storage constraints. Experimental results confirm the potential of the proposed representation; namely, our system leads to similar compression performance as classical inter-view coding, while it provides the high level of flexibility that is required for interactive streaming. Hence, our new framework represents a promising solution for 3D data representation in novel interactive multimedia services

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

Contributions in image and video coding

Orientador: Max Henrique Machado CostaTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de ComputaçãoResumo: A comunidade de codificação de imagens e vídeo vem também trabalhando em inovações que vão além das tradicionais técnicas de codificação de imagens e vídeo. Este trabalho é um conjunto de contribuições a vários tópicos que têm recebido crescente interesse de pesquisadores na comunidade, nominalmente, codificação escalável, codificação de baixa complexidade para dispositivos móveis, codificação de vídeo de múltiplas vistas e codificação adaptativa em tempo real. A primeira contribuição estuda o desempenho de três transformadas 3-D rápidas por blocos em um codificador de vídeo de baixa complexidade. O codificador recebeu o nome de Fast Embedded Video Codec (FEVC). Novos métodos de implementação e ordens de varredura são propostos para as transformadas. Os coeficiente 3-D são codificados por planos de bits pelos codificadores de entropia, produzindo um fluxo de bits (bitstream) de saída totalmente embutida. Todas as implementações são feitas usando arquitetura com aritmética inteira de 16 bits. Somente adições e deslocamentos de bits são necessários, o que reduz a complexidade computacional. Mesmo com essas restrições, um bom desempenho em termos de taxa de bits versus distorção pôde ser obtido e os tempos de codificação são significativamente menores (em torno de 160 vezes) quando comparados ao padrão H.264/AVC. A segunda contribuição é a otimização de uma recente abordagem proposta para codificação de vídeo de múltiplas vistas em aplicações de video-conferência e outras aplicações do tipo "unicast" similares. O cenário alvo nessa abordagem é fornecer vídeo com percepção real em 3-D e ponto de vista livre a boas taxas de compressão. Para atingir tal objetivo, pesos são atribuídos a cada vista e mapeados em parâmetros de quantização. Neste trabalho, o mapeamento ad-hoc anteriormente proposto entre pesos e parâmetros de quantização é mostrado ser quase-ótimo para uma fonte Gaussiana e um mapeamento ótimo é derivado para fonte típicas de vídeo. A terceira contribuição explora várias estratégias para varredura adaptativa dos coeficientes da transformada no padrão JPEG XR. A ordem de varredura original, global e adaptativa do JPEG XR é comparada com os métodos de varredura localizados e híbridos propostos neste trabalho. Essas novas ordens não requerem mudanças nem nos outros estágios de codificação e decodificação, nem na definição da bitstream A quarta e última contribuição propõe uma transformada por blocos dependente do sinal. As transformadas hierárquicas usualmente exploram a informação residual entre os níveis no estágio da codificação de entropia, mas não no estágio da transformada. A transformada proposta neste trabalho é uma técnica de compactação de energia que também explora as similaridades estruturais entre os níveis de resolução. A idéia central da técnica é incluir na transformada hierárquica um número de funções de base adaptativas derivadas da resolução menor do sinal. Um codificador de imagens completo foi desenvolvido para medir o desempenho da nova transformada e os resultados obtidos são discutidos neste trabalhoAbstract: The image and video coding community has often been working on new advances that go beyond traditional image and video architectures. This work is a set of contributions to various topics that have received increasing attention from researchers in the community, namely, scalable coding, low-complexity coding for portable devices, multiview video coding and run-time adaptive coding. The first contribution studies the performance of three fast block-based 3-D transforms in a low complexity video codec. The codec has received the name Fast Embedded Video Codec (FEVC). New implementation methods and scanning orders are proposed for the transforms. The 3-D coefficients are encoded bit-plane by bit-plane by entropy coders, producing a fully embedded output bitstream. All implementation is performed using 16-bit integer arithmetic. Only additions and bit shifts are necessary, thus lowering computational complexity. Even with these constraints, reasonable rate versus distortion performance can be achieved and the encoding time is significantly smaller (around 160 times) when compared to the H.264/AVC standard. The second contribution is the optimization of a recent approach proposed for multiview video coding in videoconferencing applications or other similar unicast-like applications. The target scenario in this approach is providing realistic 3-D video with free viewpoint video at good compression rates. To achieve such an objective, weights are computed for each view and mapped into quantization parameters. In this work, the previously proposed ad-hoc mapping between weights and quantization parameters is shown to be quasi-optimum for a Gaussian source and an optimum mapping is derived for a typical video source. The third contribution exploits several strategies for adaptive scanning of transform coefficients in the JPEG XR standard. The original global adaptive scanning order applied in JPEG XR is compared with the localized and hybrid scanning methods proposed in this work. These new orders do not require changes in either the other coding and decoding stages or in the bitstream definition. The fourth and last contribution proposes an hierarchical signal dependent block-based transform. Hierarchical transforms usually exploit the residual cross-level information at the entropy coding step, but not at the transform step. The transform proposed in this work is an energy compaction technique that can also exploit these cross-resolution-level structural similarities. The core idea of the technique is to include in the hierarchical transform a number of adaptive basis functions derived from the lower resolution of the signal. A full image codec is developed in order to measure the performance of the new transform and the obtained results are discussed in this workDoutoradoTelecomunicações e TelemáticaDoutor em Engenharia Elétric

Depth coding using depth discontinuity prediction and in-loop boundary reconstruction filtering

This paper presents a depth coding strategy that employs K-means clustering to segment the sequence of depth images into K clusters. The resulting clusters are losslessly compressed and transmitted as supplemental enhancement information to aid the decoder in predicting macroblocks containing depth discontinuities. This method further employs an in-loop boundary reconstruction filter to reduce distortions at the edges. The proposed algorithm was integrated within both H.264/AVC and H.264/MVC video coding standards. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms the state of the art depth coding schemes, where rendered Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) gains between 0.1 dB and 0.5 dB were observed.peer-reviewe