Quality-Driven Coding and Prioritization of 3D Video over Wireless Networks

The introduction of more affordable and better quality 3D displays has increased the importance of designing efficient transmission systems for 3D video services. For achieving the best possible 3D video quality, it is necessary to take into account human perception issues to avoid potentially disturbing artifacts. These perception issues are considered in the design of the cross layer video adaptation and transmission system proposed in this work. One of the most popular formats for representing 3D video is color plus depth, where a 2D color video is supplemented with a depth map. The depth map represents the per pixel distance from the camera and can be used to render 3D video at the users terminal. The proposed scheme uses this depth information to segment the video into foreground and background parts. The foreground and background are then coded as separate video streams, whose data is prioritized according to its influence on video quality at the decoder. Received video quality is estimated by modeling the effect of packet loss and subsequent concealment. A home gateway scenario with IEEE 802.11e is simulated. The proposed 3D video distribution system exploits the different priority access classes to achieve high quality 3D video even with significant levels of packet loss, and high network loads. The simulations show that gains in PSNR of 1-3dB can be achieved, depending on the amount of activity within a particular video sequence. Subjective results are also obtained to demonstrate that the performance improvements are perceptible.