QUALITY-CONTROLLED VIEW INTERPOLATION FOR MULTIVIEW VIDEO

Multiview video coding systems are characterized by their high en-coding complexity. In this paper, we propose to reduce the encoding complexity by omitting frames at the encoder in a pattern that keeps the ability to reconstruct an interpolated version of each omitted frame, by motion-compensated and inter-view interpolation. Since our goal is maintaining good visual quality, we propose a method to estimate the quality of the interpolated frames at the decoder by transmitting a small amount of error control information in lieu of an omitted frame. This information is obtained from a projection of the frame on a suitable low-dimensional basis. The projection coefficients can be compressed by conventional techniques or, more efficiently, by Slepian-Wolf coding. Based on the quality estimate, the decoder can adaptively detect the interpolation technique that re-sults in better visual quality. Moreover, it can suppress occasional frames for which interpolation yields noticeable artifacts. Experi-mental results demonstrate that our approach eliminates most inter-polation artifacts and achieves much better visual quality at a very small increase in bit-rate. Index Terms — video quality, multiview video, interpolation 1