Full parallax 3D video content compression

Motion parallax is a key cue in the perception of the depth that current 3D stereoscopy and auto-stereoscopy technologies are not able to reproduce. Integral imaging and Super Multi-View video (SMV) are 3D technologies that allow creating a light-field representation of a scene with a smooth full motion parallax (i.e., in horizontal and vertical directions). However the large amount of data required is challenging and implies a need for new efficient coding technologies. This chapter first describes integral imaging and SMV content, acquisition, and display. Then it provides an overview of state-of-the-art methods for full parallax 3D content compression. Finally, several coding schemes are compared and a coding structure that exploits inter-view correlations in both horizontal and vertical directions is proposed. The new structure provides a rate reduction (for the same quality) up to 29.1% when compared to a basic anchor structure. Neighboring Block Disparity Vector (NBDV) and Inter-View Motion Prediction (IVMP) coding tools are further improved to efficiently exploit coding structures in two dimensions, with rate reduction up to 4.2% with respect to the reference 3D-HEVC encoder.