Depth Enhancement Methods for Centralized Texture⁃Depth Packing Formats

[Abstract] To deliver three⁃dimension (3D) videos through the current two⁃dimension (2D) broadcasting systems, the frame⁃compatible packing formats properly including one texture frame and one depth map in various down⁃sampling ratios have been proposed to achieve the simplest and most effective solution. To enhance the compatible centralized texture⁃depth packing (CTDP) formats, in this paper, we further introduce two depth enhancement algorithms to further improve the quality of CTDP formats for delivering 3D video services. To compensate the loss of color YCbCr 444 to 420 conversion of colored⁃depth, two efficient depth reconstruction processes based on texture and depth consistency are proposed. Experimental results show that the proposed enhanced CTDP depacking process outperforms the 2DDP format and the original CTDP depacking procedure in synthesizing virtual views. With the help of the proposed efficient depth reconstruction processes, more correct reconstructed depth maps and better synthesized quality can be achieved. Before the available 3D broadcasting systems, which adopt truly depth and texture dependent coding procedure, we believe that the proposed CTDP formats with depth enhancement could help to deliver 3D videos in the current 2D broadcasting systems simply and efficiently.

[Keywords] 3D videos; frame⁃compatible; 2D⁃plus⁃depth; CTDP