30,684 research outputs found
In-Network View Synthesis for Interactive Multiview Video Systems
To enable Interactive multiview video systems with a minimum view-switching
delay, multiple camera views are sent to the users, which are used as reference
images to synthesize additional virtual views via depth-image-based rendering.
In practice, bandwidth constraints may however restrict the number of reference
views sent to clients per time unit, which may in turn limit the quality of the
synthesized viewpoints. We argue that the reference view selection should
ideally be performed close to the users, and we study the problem of in-network
reference view synthesis such that the navigation quality is maximized at the
clients. We consider a distributed cloud network architecture where data stored
in a main cloud is delivered to end users with the help of cloudlets, i.e.,
resource-rich proxies close to the users. In order to satisfy last-hop
bandwidth constraints from the cloudlet to the users, a cloudlet re-samples
viewpoints of the 3D scene into a discrete set of views (combination of
received camera views and virtual views synthesized) to be used as reference
for the synthesis of additional virtual views at the client. This in-network
synthesis leads to better viewpoint sampling given a bandwidth constraint
compared to simple selection of camera views, but it may however carry a
distortion penalty in the cloudlet-synthesized reference views. We therefore
cast a new reference view selection problem where the best subset of views is
defined as the one minimizing the distortion over a view navigation window
defined by the user under some transmission bandwidth constraints. We show that
the view selection problem is NP-hard, and propose an effective polynomial time
algorithm using dynamic programming to solve the optimization problem.
Simulation results finally confirm the performance gain offered by virtual view
synthesis in the network
Steered mixture-of-experts for light field images and video : representation and coding
Research in light field (LF) processing has heavily increased over the last decade. This is largely driven by the desire to achieve the same level of immersion and navigational freedom for camera-captured scenes as it is currently available for CGI content. Standardization organizations such as MPEG and JPEG continue to follow conventional coding paradigms in which viewpoints are discretely represented on 2-D regular grids. These grids are then further decorrelated through hybrid DPCM/transform techniques. However, these 2-D regular grids are less suited for high-dimensional data, such as LFs. We propose a novel coding framework for higher-dimensional image modalities, called Steered Mixture-of-Experts (SMoE). Coherent areas in the higher-dimensional space are represented by single higher-dimensional entities, called kernels. These kernels hold spatially localized information about light rays at any angle arriving at a certain region. The global model consists thus of a set of kernels which define a continuous approximation of the underlying plenoptic function. We introduce the theory of SMoE and illustrate its application for 2-D images, 4-D LF images, and 5-D LF video. We also propose an efficient coding strategy to convert the model parameters into a bitstream. Even without provisions for high-frequency information, the proposed method performs comparable to the state of the art for low-to-mid range bitrates with respect to subjective visual quality of 4-D LF images. In case of 5-D LF video, we observe superior decorrelation and coding performance with coding gains of a factor of 4x in bitrate for the same quality. At least equally important is the fact that our method inherently has desired functionality for LF rendering which is lacking in other state-of-the-art techniques: (1) full zero-delay random access, (2) light-weight pixel-parallel view reconstruction, and (3) intrinsic view interpolation and super-resolution
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
Survey of image-based representations and compression techniques
In this paper, we survey the techniques for image-based rendering (IBR) and for compressing image-based representations. Unlike traditional three-dimensional (3-D) computer graphics, in which 3-D geometry of the scene is known, IBR techniques render novel views directly from input images. IBR techniques can be classified into three categories according to how much geometric information is used: rendering without geometry, rendering with implicit geometry (i.e., correspondence), and rendering with explicit geometry (either with approximate or accurate geometry). We discuss the characteristics of these categories and their representative techniques. IBR techniques demonstrate a surprising diverse range in their extent of use of images and geometry in representing 3-D scenes. We explore the issues in trading off the use of images and geometry by revisiting plenoptic-sampling analysis and the notions of view dependency and geometric proxies. Finally, we highlight compression techniques specifically designed for image-based representations. Such compression techniques are important in making IBR techniques practical.published_or_final_versio
Neural Residual Radiance Fields for Streamably Free-Viewpoint Videos
The success of the Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) for modeling and free-view
rendering static objects has inspired numerous attempts on dynamic scenes.
Current techniques that utilize neural rendering for facilitating free-view
videos (FVVs) are restricted to either offline rendering or are capable of
processing only brief sequences with minimal motion. In this paper, we present
a novel technique, Residual Radiance Field or ReRF, as a highly compact neural
representation to achieve real-time FVV rendering on long-duration dynamic
scenes. ReRF explicitly models the residual information between adjacent
timestamps in the spatial-temporal feature space, with a global
coordinate-based tiny MLP as the feature decoder. Specifically, ReRF employs a
compact motion grid along with a residual feature grid to exploit inter-frame
feature similarities. We show such a strategy can handle large motions without
sacrificing quality. We further present a sequential training scheme to
maintain the smoothness and the sparsity of the motion/residual grids. Based on
ReRF, we design a special FVV codec that achieves three orders of magnitudes
compression rate and provides a companion ReRF player to support online
streaming of long-duration FVVs of dynamic scenes. Extensive experiments
demonstrate the effectiveness of ReRF for compactly representing dynamic
radiance fields, enabling an unprecedented free-viewpoint viewing experience in
speed and quality.Comment: Accepted by CVPR 2023. Project page, see
https://aoliao12138.github.io/ReRF
Improved inter-layer prediction for Light field content coding with display scalability
Light field imaging based on microlens arrays - also known as plenoptic, holoscopic and integral imaging - has recently risen up as feasible and prospective technology due to its ability to support functionalities not straightforwardly available in conventional imaging systems, such as: post-production refocusing and depth of field changing. However, to gradually reach the consumer market and to provide interoperability with current 2D and 3D representations, a display scalable coding solution is essential. In this context, this paper proposes an improved display scalable light field codec comprising a three-layer hierarchical coding architecture (previously proposed by the authors) that provides interoperability with 2D (Base Layer) and 3D stereo and multiview (First Layer) representations, while the Second Layer supports the complete light field content. For further improving the compression performance, novel exemplar-based inter-layer coding tools are proposed here for the Second Layer, namely: (i) an inter-layer reference picture construction relying on an exemplar-based optimization algorithm for texture synthesis, and (ii) a direct prediction mode based on exemplar texture samples from lower layers. Experimental results show that the proposed solution performs better than the tested benchmark solutions, including the authors' previous scalable codec.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio
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