Adaptive Plane Projection for Video-Based Point Cloud Coding

Abstract

One of the most promising emerging 3D representation paradigms is the point cloud (PC) model, notably due to the new set of applications that it enables, from immersive telepresence to 3D geographic information systems. Recognizing the potential of this representation model, MPEG has launched a standardization project to specify efficient PC coding solutions. This project has led to the so-called Video-based Point Cloud Coding (V-PCC) standard, which is based on the idea of projecting the dynamic PC geometry and texture into a sequence of frames to be coded with the highly efficient HEVC video coding standard. In V-PCC, the projection of points and color attributes is always performed using the same, rigid set of projection planes, independently of the PC characteristics. This paper proposes a more flexible coding solution, which improves the V-PCC Intra coding mode by adopting a content dependent set of projection planes, thus, more adapted to the characteristics of the PCs to be coded, targeting a better compression performance. The experimental results show an average total bitrate saving of around 15% regarding V-PCC with clear benefits in terms of subjective assessment.