Low-delay multiview video coding for free-viewpoint video communication

We have proposed free-viewpoint video communications, in which a viewer can change the viewpoint and viewing angle when receiving and watching video content. A free-viewpoint video consists of several views, whose viewpoints are different. To freely and instantaneously change the viewpoint and view angle, a random access capability to decode the requested view with little delay is necessary. In this paper, a multiview video coding method to achieve high coding efficiency with low-delay random access functionality is proposed. In the proposed method, the GOP is the basic unit of a view, and selective reference picture memory management is applied to multiple GOPs to improve coding efficiency. In addition, the coding method of disparity vectors, which utilizes the camera arrangement, is proposed. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 38(5): 14– 29, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (). DOI 10.1002sscj.20683