Conversion of free-viewpoint 3D multi-view video for stereoscopic displays

This paper presents our ongoing research on view synthesis of free-viewpoint 3D multi-view video for 3DTV. With the emerging breakthrough of stereoscopic 3DTV, we have extended a reference free-viewpoint rendering algorithm to generate stereoscopic views. Two similar solutions for converting free-viewpoint 3D multi-view video into a stereoscopic vision have been developed. These solutions take into account the complexity of the algorithms by exploiting the redundancy in stereo images, since we aim at a real-time hardware implementation. Both solutions are based on applying a horizontal shift instead of double execution of the reference free-viewpoint rendering algorithm for stereo generation (FVP stereo generation), so that the rendering time can be reduced by as much as 30–40 %. The trade-off however, is that the rendering quality is 0.5–0.9 dB lower than when applying FVP stereo generation. Our results show that stereoscopic views can be efficiently generated from 3D multi-view video by using unique properties in stereoscopic views, such as identical orientation, similarities in textures and small baseline.