Depth intra skip prediction for 3D video coding

Depth image compression play a key role in the 3D video system. It can be used as supplementary data for rendering. In this paper, we present a depth intra skip prediction for 3D video coding. The depth intra skip prediction is designed based on the intra 16x16 mode. It exploits the estimated prediction direction which is derived from the adjacent neighboring pixels and does not encode any residual data. The proposed depth intra skip prediction is allowed for I slice as well as P and B slices. The usage of the depth intra skip prediction is signaled by a newly defined macroblock level flag. From the experiments, we confirm that the proposed depth intra skip prediction reduces the depth bit rate by up to 18.69% while preserving same synthesis quality for the virtual views.