Free viewpoint switching in multi-view video streaming using Wyner-Ziv video coding

Abstract

The free viewpoint switching is one of the most important features of multi-view video streaming. The key problem lies in how to achieve the best performance when the camera processing capability and the network bandwidth are limited. In this paper, we propose a novel free viewpoint switching scheme for multi-view video scenario, in which the distributed video coding technique is employed. In this scheme, the multi-camera video sources are encoded separately with the traditional hybrid video coding scheme, and meanwhile an alternative bitstream is produced for every frame based on the Wyner-Ziv coding method for the purpose of error correction when the viewpoint switching occurs. When switching happens, the Wyner-Ziv bits corresponding to the actual reference frame at the switching point is transmitted and used to recover the true reference. Instead of completely removing the mismatch, the proposed switching scheme tries to reduce the mismatch to an acceptable level so as to save the bits for the switching frame. A wavelet transform domain Wyner-Ziv coding method is proposed to produce the Wyner-Ziv bits for the switching frame. Conclusively, with the proposed scheme, the inter-camera communication can be avoided and the drifting error can be controlled efficiently when the viewpoint switching occurs.