Adaptive stereoscopic 3D video streaming

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of scalable stereoscopic video coding strategies for adaptive streaming. In particular, we compare scalable simulcast coding of both views using SVC with scalable coding of one view with SVC and non-scalable coding of the other view using H.264/AVC, and benchmark them against non-scalable dependent coding of both views using the MVC. All of these coding options allow both symmetric and asymmetric coding of stereo videos. In addition, we propose a lightweight and periodic feedback mechanism for rate estimation and a strategy to adapt the total stereo source rate using SNR scalability option of SVC, while minimizing the loss rate of non-discardable packets. Experimental results show that dynamic rate scaling of only one view provides sufficient rate adaptation capability and better overall compression efficiency compared to scaling both of the views.