Depth map post-processing for 3D-TV

Automatically generated depth maps from stereo or monoscopic video are usually not aligned with the objects in the original image and may suffer from large area outliers. We post-process these depth maps using a novel method to first downsample the input depth map followed by filtering and upsampling applying joint-bilateral filters to produce image aligned depth maps at full resolution. Unlike a known method of applying joint-bilateral filters at full resolution depth maps, our method performs better in suppressing object details in the filtered depth map while properly aligning the object boundaries. Moreover, our method has low computational cost which enables usage in consumer products.