Advanced 3D Video Processing and Coding

Aljosa Smolic

Abstract

Stereoscopic 3D is established in cinema, on Blu-ray, TV, PCs, laptops, and mobile devices. Since nowadays technology for stereo 3D is mature and content creation is understood well enough, these developments are expected to be sustainable this time. Most current systems rely on classical approaches to 3D video, i.e. representation as stereo or multiview video, coding and transmission using simulcast, frame-compatible composition or MVC. More advanced "next generation" approaches exploit some kind of understanding of the 3D scene geometry such as depth or disparity, in order to extend functionality and increase efficiency. This includes for instance flexible adjustment of depth impression to viewing conditions and user preferences or support of autostereoscopic multiview displays. Also content creation for classical stereo 3D can greatly benefit from such 3D geometry aware processing. Naturally such advanced 3D video representation formats require advanced processing algorithms, e.g. to extract 3D geometry and to render virtual views. Such advanced 3D video representation and processing will be the focus of this tutorial, as well as related coding algorithms.

Speakers

Aljosa Smolic

Martin

Dr. Aljosa Smolic joined Disney Research Zurich, Switzerland in 2009, as Senior Research Scientist and Head of the "Advanced Video Technology" group. Before he was Scientific Project Manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut (HHI), Berlin, also heading a research group. He has been involved in several national and international research projects, where he conducted research in various fields of video processing, video coding, computer vision and computer graphics and published more than 100 referred papers in these fields. In current projects he is responsible for research in 2D video, 3D video and free viewpoint video processing and coding. He received the Dipl.-Ing. Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany in 1996, and the Dr.-Ing. Degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from Aachen University of Technology (RWTH), Germany, in 2001. Dr. Smolic received the "Rudolf-Urtlel-Award" of the German Society for Technology in TV and Cinema (FKTG) for his dissertation in 2002. He is Area Editor for Signal Processing: Image Communication and served as Guest Editor for the Proceedings of the IEEE, IEEE Transactions on CSVT, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, and other scientific journals. He is Committee Member of several conferences, including ICIP, ICME, and EUSIPCO and served in several Chair positions of conferences. He chaired the MPEG ad hoc group on 3DAV pioneering standards for 3D video. In this context he also served as one of the Editors of the Multi-view Video Coding (MVC) standard. Since many years he is teaching full lecture courses on Multimedia Communications and other topics, now at ETH Zurich.