Stereoscopic video coding with asymmetric luminance and chrominance qualities

Three-dimensional (3D) video technology is becoming increasingly popular, as it can provide stereoscopic perception and immersive experience to end users. Most three-dimensional video compression schemes had been developed for stereoscopic video using traditional two-dimensional video compression techniques. However, stereoscopic perception had not been considered in these methods to further improve the coding efficiency. In this paper, a novel stereoscopic video coding method is proposed with asymmetric luminance and chrominance qualities based on the suppression theory of binocular vision. We base our method on two hypotheses: a quantitative just noticeable distortion (JND) threshold exists between left and right views, and chrominance degradation in right view will not affect the stereoscopic effect. Then, two subjective perception experiments are conducted to verify the above hypotheses. Finally, an asymmetric stereoscopic video coding method is engineered deriving from the hypotheses. Experimental results show that the proposed method saves bitrate significantly by from 15% to 35%, and can achieve superior reconstruction quality at trivial degradation cost.