A Flexible Reference Picture Selection Method for Spatial DIRECT Mode in Multiview Video Coding

The motion information of the macroblock signaled as the spatial DIRECT mode can be derived from the neighboring blocks. The closest reference picture in the reference picture list used by the neighboring blocks is selected as the reference picture of the macroblock. Both temporal and interview reference pictures are put into the reference picture list in order to improve the coding efficiency in MVC. A flexible reference picture selection method taking the diversity of reference picture list into account is proposed in this paper. The experimental results show that the proposed method can improve coding efficiency especially when the interview reference pictures are put ahead of the temporal reference pictures.