Coding and intermediate view synthesis of multiview video plus depth

For advanced 3D Video (3DV) applications, efficient data representations are investigated, which only transmit a subset of the views that are required for 3D visualization. From this subset, all intermediate views are synthesized from sample-dense color and depth data. In this paper, the method for reliability-based view synthesis from compressed multi-view + depth data (MVD) is investigated and corresponding results are shown. The initial problem in such 3DV systems is the interdependency between view capturing, coding and view synthesis. For evaluating each component separately, we first generate results from the coding stage only, where color and depth coding is carried out separately. In the next step, we add the view synthesis stage with reliability-based view synthesis and show, how the separate coding results influence the view synthesis quality and what type of artifacts are produced. Efficient bit rate distribution between color and depth is investigated by objective as well as subjective evaluations. Furthermore, quality characteristics across the viewing range for different bit rate distributions are analyzed. Finally, the robustness of the reliability-based view synthesis to coding artifacts is presented.