A backward compatible 3D scene coding using residual prediction

In order to represent 3D space, we have proposed to use the representation that consists of multi-view video plus a single view depth map. This format is backward compatible with the MPEG-C Part 3 (a.k.a. ISO/IEC 23002-3). This paper proposes a coding scheme on this 3D space representation that is efficient even if low delay decoding functionality is required. We apply the residual prediction framework to the view synthesis prediction errors. Experiments show that the proposed scheme achieves up to about 7.7% bitrate reduction compared to multi-view video coding with disparity compensation, even if the depth map video is added. Furthermore, the proposed scheme doesn´t require any syntax changes to the conventional video coding standard and it needs few modifications on the circuits of conventional video codecs; it might be possible to reuse almost all of the components. The backward compatibility and reusability achieved by the proposed scheme are quite important to reduce manufacturing costs and time to market.