Single-loop decoding for multiview video coding

Multiview video coding (MVC) is currently being standardized by the Joint Video Team as an extension of H264/AVC. When an MVC bitstream is decoded, some views (named target views) are to be displayed; some other views (named dependent views) may not be displayed but are needed for inter-view prediction of the target views. The original MVC design requires pictures of the dependent views to be fully decoded and stored. This entails both high decoding complexity and high memory consumption for the pictures in the views which are not intended for display, particularly when the number of dependent views is large. In this paper, a single-loop decoding (SLD) scheme is introduced to address these disadvantages. SLD requires only partial decoding of pictures in dependent views and thus significantly reduces decoding complexity and memory consumption. The proposed method is based on the so-called motion skip, wherein inter-view motion and coding mode prediction is exploited. Experimental results show that compared to coding schemes that require comparable complexity, significant compression gain can be achieved. For example, 25% bit-rate saving on average can be obtained compared to simulcast. Simulation results also show that the proposed SLD scheme provides a substantial reduction of complexity and memory size, at the expense of only a minor compression efficiency loss, compared with multiple-loop decoding MVC schemes.