New distortion model for depth coding in 3DVC

Video plus the corresponding depth maps is now the most popular data format for 3D video coding, as it is convenient to synthesize an arbitrary intermediate virtual view without the need to display the depth map for end users. How to compress the depth map efficiently is one of the key problems in 3DVC. In this paper we propose a new distortion model for depth map coding by considering the view synthesis distortion caused by depth distortion and the disparity rounding problem. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can achieve 34% bit-rate saving for depth map coding, or 1.28 dB gain in terms of PSNR on average for synthesized virtual views.