Free Viewpoint Video Based on Stitching Technique

Image stitching is a technique used for creating one panoramic scene from multiple images. It is used in panoramic photography and video where the viewer can only scroll horizontally and vertically across the scene. However, stitching has not been used for creating free-viewpoint videos (FVV) where viewers can change their viewing points freely and smoothly while playing the video. current research, implemented FVV playing system using image stitching, this system allows users to enjoy the capability of moving their viewpoint freely and smoothly. To develop this system, user should capture MVV from different viewpoints and with appropriate region area for each pair of cameras then the system stitch the overlapped video to create stitched video/videos to display it in FVV playing system with applying freely and smoothly switching and interpolation of viewpoints over video playback. Current research evaluated the performance of video playing system based on system idea, system accuracy, smoothness, and user satisfaction. The results of evaluation have been very positive in most aspects

Depth map compression via 3D region-based representation

In 3D video, view synthesis is used to create new virtual views between encoded camera views. Errors in the coding of the depth maps introduce geometry inconsistencies in synthesized views. In this paper, a new 3D plane representation of the scene is presented which improves the performance of current standard video codecs in the view synthesis domain. Two image segmentation algorithms are proposed for generating a color and depth segmentation. Using both partitions, depth maps are segmented into regions without sharp discontinuities without having to explicitly signal all depth edges. The resulting regions are represented using a planar model in the 3D world scene. This 3D representation allows an efficient encoding while preserving the 3D characteristics of the scene. The 3D planes open up the possibility to code multiview images with a unique representation.Postprint (author's final draft

3D-TV Production from Conventional Cameras for Sports Broadcast

3DTV production of live sports events presents a challenging problem involving conflicting requirements of main- taining broadcast stereo picture quality with practical problems in developing robust systems for cost effective deployment. In this paper we propose an alternative approach to stereo production in sports events using the conventional monocular broadcast cameras for 3D reconstruction of the event and subsequent stereo rendering. This approach has the potential advantage over stereo camera rigs of recovering full scene depth, allowing inter-ocular distance and convergence to be adapted according to the requirements of the target display and enabling stereo coverage from both existing and ‘virtual’ camera positions without additional cameras. A prototype system is presented with results of sports TV production trials for rendering of stereo and free-viewpoint video sequences of soccer and rugby

Boston Hospitality Review: Fall 2014

Boston Market Hotel Review by Andrea Foster -- The Prevalence of Longevity Amongst Leading Brands by Bradford Hudson -- European River Cruising On The Rise Among American Tourists by Melinda Jàszbernèny -- Building A Spirit of Inclusion: Pan Am and The Cultural Revolution by Mirembe B. Birigwa -- Re-imagining The Hotel Guestroom for The Millennial Business Traveler by Alexis Oliver -- Introducing RevPASH: The Free Webtool Application by Peter Szend

Random access prediction structures for light field video coding with MV-HEVC

Computational imaging and light field technology promise to deliver the required six-degrees-of-freedom for natural scenes in virtual reality. Already existing extensions of standardized video coding formats, such as multi-view coding and multi-view plus depth, are the most conventional light field video coding solutions at the moment. The latest multi-view coding format, which is a direct extension of the high efficiency video coding (HEVC) standard, is called multi-view HEVC (or MV-HEVC). MV-HEVC treats each light field view as a separate video sequence, and uses syntax elements similar to standard HEVC for exploiting redundancies between neighboring views. To achieve this, inter-view and temporal prediction schemes are deployed with the aim to find the most optimal trade-off between coding performance and reconstruction quality. The number of possible prediction structures is unlimited and many of them are proposed in the literature. Although some of them are efficient in terms of compression ratio, they complicate random access due to the dependencies on previously decoded pixels or frames. Random access is an important feature in video delivery, and a crucial requirement in multi-view video coding. In this work, we propose and compare different prediction structures for coding light field video using MV-HEVC with a focus on both compression efficiency and random accessibility. Experiments on three different short-baseline light field video sequences show the trade-off between bit-rate and distortion, as well as the average number of decoded views/frames, necessary for displaying any random frame at any time instance. The findings of this work indicate the most appropriate prediction structure depending on the available bandwidth and the required degree of random access

Data compression and transmission aspects of panoramic videos

Panoramic videos are effective means for representing static or dynamic scenes along predefined paths. They allow users to change their viewpoints interactively at points in time or space defined by the paths. High-resolution panoramic videos, while desirable, consume a significant amount of storage and bandwidth for transmission. They also make real-time decoding computationally very intensive. This paper proposes efficient data compression and transmission techniques for panoramic videos. A high-performance MPEG-2-like compression algorithm, which takes into account the random access requirements and the redundancies of panoramic videos, is proposed. The transmission aspects of panoramic videos over cable networks, local area networks (LANs), and the Internet are also discussed. In particular, an efficient advanced delivery sharing scheme (ADSS) for reducing repeated transmission and retrieval of frequently requested video segments is introduced. This protocol was verified by constructing an experimental VOD system consisting of a video server and eight Pentium 4 computers. Using the synthetic panoramic video Village at a rate of 197 kb/s and 7 f/s, nearly two-thirds of the memory access and transmission bandwidth of the video server were saved under normal network traffic.published_or_final_versio