Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Stereoscopic video is one of the simplest forms of 3D video. It provides the sensation of
depth to end users through rendering of two adjacent views of the same scene. Moreover,
this 3D video representation has the potential to be the next step forward in the video
communication market due to its simple scene representation and adaptability to existing
audio-visual technologies. In order to support 3D video services, the existing 2D video
application scenarios need to be scaled into a fourth dimension, called “thedepth”.The
availability of multimedia content in 3D will enhance the overall quality of reconstructed
visual information. Therefore, this technology will bring us one step closer to the true re-
presentation of real-world sceneries. Moreover, 3D video technologies will improve our
QualityofExperience(QoE)ingeneralathomeandintheworkplace.Themainchallenge
of these emerging technologies is to adapt them into the existing video communication in-
frastructure in order to widely disseminate the content during the introduction/migration
phase of these new multimedia technologies.
Even though the initial developments of 3D video technologies are in place, there are
a several open areas to be investigated through research. For instance, the storage and
transport methods (i.e. signaling protocols, network architectures, error recovery) for 3D
video are not well exploited. Moreover, the addressing of these problems is complex
due to the diversity of different 3D video representations (e.g. stereoscopic video, multi-
viewvideo).Inaddition,thewaysandmeansoffulfillingtheextensivedemand for system
resources(e.g.storageandtransmissionbandwidth)needtobeaddressed.Furthermore,the
backward compatibility and scalability issues of these applications need to be addressed
in order to facilitate the convergence/integration of these services with the existing 2D
video applications. The evaluation of 3D video quality is important to quantify the effects
of different system parameter settings (e.g. bitrate) on the perceived quality. However, the
measurementof3Dvideoqualityisnotstraightforwardasin2Dvideoduetomulti-dimen-
sional perceptual attributes (e.g. presence, depth perception, naturalness, etc.) associated
with 3D viewing. Therefore, much more investigation needs to be carried out to simpli-
fy the quality evaluation of 3D video or 3D QoE. This topic has presented the proposed
solutions for some of the issues mentioned above with a major focus on 3D video com-
pression and transmission, which are described below.
The captured 3D video content is significantly larger than 2D video content. For example,
stereoscopic video could be twice the size ofa conventional 2Dvideo stream, asit hastwo
closely related camera views. As a result, 3D video requires a large storage capacity and
