Low-delay view random access for multi-view video coding

Multi-view video coding is becoming a very active research topic, as multi-view video system provides the interactive feature which makes viewers experience the free viewpoint navigation within the range covered by the shooting cameras compared with the traditional single view video. Multi-view Video Coding aims at compressing the redundancy between views besides temporal correlations within each view. Rapid view random access is a basic requirement for multi-view video communication. Though inter-view prediction enhances the coding efficiency, it limits the rapid view random access capability. In this paper, we propose three approaches to provide low-delay view random access capability while keeping the high rate-distortion performance. The proposed techniques, including SP/SI frame coding, interleaved view coding and secondary representation coding, vastly reduce the decoding delays while view random access occurs and greatly improve the ability of switching between views.