Efficient Multiview Video Coding Using 3-D Coding and Saliency-Based Bit Allocation

Capturing a scene using multiple cameras from different angles is expected to provide the necessary interactivity in the 3-D space to satisfy end-users’ demands for observing objects and actions from different angles and depths. Existing multiview video coding (MVC) technologies face tradeoff among rate-distortion performance, random access frame delay, i.e., interactivity, and computational time. To address above mentioned tradeoffs, a novel cuboid MVC strategy is proposed with 3-D frame referencing structure to improve interactivity and computational time, an additional reference frame to improve rate-distortion performance for occluded areas, and visual attention-based bit allocation to provide better perceptual video quality. The experimental results reveal that the proposed scheme provides better interactivity, reduced computational time, and better perceptual quality compared to the 3D-HEVC implementation, HTM 15.0.