A joint encoder-decoder error control framework for stereoscopic video coding

Stereoscopic video coding (SSVC) plays an important role in various 3D video applications. In SSVC, robust stereoscopic video transmission over error-prone networks is still a challenge problem to be solved. In this paper, we propose a joint encoder-decoder error control framework for SSVC, where error-resilient source coding, transmission network conditions, and error concealment scheme are jointly considered to achieve better error robustness performance. The proposed joint encoder-decoder error control framework includes two parts: an error concealment algorithm at the decoder side and a rate-distortion optimized error resilience algorithm at the encoder side. For error concealment at the decoder side, an overlapped block motion and disparity compensation based error concealment scheme is proposed to adaptively utilize inter-view correlations and temporal correlations. For error resilience at the encoder side, first, the inter-view refreshment is proposed for SSVC to suppress error propagations. Then, an end-to-end distortion model for SSVC is derived, which jointly considers the transmission network conditions, inter-view refreshment, and error concealment tools at the decoder side. Finally, based on the derived end-to-end distortion model, the rate-distortion optimized error resilience algorithm is presented to adaptively select inter-view, inter- or intra-coding for SSVC. The experimental results show that the proposed joint encoder-decoder error control framework has superior error robustness performance for stereoscopic video transmission over error-prone networks. (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.