360 degrees video coding using region adaptive smoothing

360 degrees video is emerging as a new way of experiencing immersive video due to the ready availability of powerful handheld devices such as smartphones. 360 degrees video enables immersive “real life”, “being there” experience for consumers by capturing the 360 degree view of the world. Users can change their viewpoint and dynamically view any part of the captured scene they desire. 360 degrees video requires higher bitrate than conventional video due to increased video resolution (4K and beyond) needed to support the wider field of view. Efficient compression of 360 degrees video is thus needed to provide high quality immersive video viewing experience to consumers. This paper provides an overview of 360 degrees video and presents a region adaptive video smoothing technique that exploits the unique characteristics of 360 degrees video to provide up to 20% bitrate savings with minimal perceptual quality degradation while requiring no modifications to the video decoder.