Depth-based 3D video formats and coding technology

This chapter provides an overview of the current status of research and standardization activity towards defining a new set of depth-based formats that facilitate the generation of intermediate views with a compact binary representation. A brief introduction is given on depth-based representation and rendering techniques, which are the basis for the functionality offered by depth-based formats. Several different coding architectures are discussed, including those that are compatible with the existing advanced video coding standard and those that are compatible with the emerging high-efficiency video coding standard. Hybrid coding architectures that mix coding formats are also discussed. Additionally, various compression technologies that have been proposed and are being considered for standardization are described. Results from a large-scale experimental evaluation are presented to indicate the possible improvements over the current state-of-the-art coding approaches. The chapter also outlines future research and standardization.