Summary
Depending on the application 3D content can be represented in various ways which are illustrated in the figure below:
- Stereo
- Image + depth
- Multiview
The different representations can be converted into each other but usually they are not perfect and may introduce artifacts. While image+depth and multiview representations are useful for 3D processing, the final representation for any stereoscopic display is a stereo pair of images or videos.
Depending on the representation different coding strategies can be used for the compression of the multiple video streams. Several efforts have been made to standardize suitable formats for the different representations based on the available tools for 2D video coding including:
- MPEG-C Part 3 [ISO/IEC 23002-3]: It describes the coding of video + depth data and the rendering of the virtual view at the reciever side.
- Multiview video coding (MVC) [ISO/IEC 14496-10:2008]: It is an extension advanced video coding (AVC) for the coding of multiple synchronized video streams
- 3D Video Coding (3DVC): It is targets multiview displays by coding multiple views with additional depth information