Comparison of Stereo Video Coding Support in MPEG - 4 MAC , H . 264 / AVC and H . 264 / SVC

In the near future, certain 2D (2 Dimensional) video application scenarios are likely be replaced by 3D (3 Dimensional) video, in order to achieve a more involving and immersive representation of visual information, and to provide more natural methods of communication. Stereoscopic video is the simplest form of 3D video, which renders two slightly different views of a scene to perceive the depth information. Currently much research is being carried out in this area including stereo video capture, coding, transmission, and display technologies. This paper presents a review of some of the most prominent methods for coding stereoscopic colour and depth video, and investigates their respective coding efficiencies. This paper also proposes a new configuration for encoding colour and depth stereoscopic video, based on the H.264/SVC video coding standard. The rate-distortion performance comparison of the colour and depth video obtained using the depth-range cameras vs. left and right video is analyzed at low bitrates using the H.264/SVC configuration. The performances are compared in terms of coding efficiency and implementation factors with the MPEG-4 MAC and H.264/AVC configurations. It was found out that the configuration proposed based on H.264/SVC performs similar to H.264/AVC and outperforms the MPEG-4 MAC based configuration in terms of coding efficiency. In terms of implementation factors the proposed configuration provides wider flexibility compared to all other configurations.