Multiview Video Compression Using Advanced HEVC Screen Content Coding

Abstract: The paper presents a new approach to multiview video coding using Screen Content Coding. It is assumed that for a time instant the frames corresponding to all views are packed into a single frame, i.e. the frame-compatible approach to multiview coding is applied. For such coding scenario, the paper demonstrates that Screen Content Coding can be efficiently used for multiview video coding. Two approaches are considered: the first using standard HEVC Screen Content Coding, and the second using Advanced Screen Content Coding. The latter is the original proposal of the authors that exploits quarter-pel motion vectors and other nonstandard extensions of HEVC Screen Content Coding. The experimental results demonstrate that multiview video coding even using standard HEVC Screen Content Coding is much more efficient than simulcast HEVC coding. The proposed Advanced Screen Content Coding provides virtually the same coding efficiency as MV-HEVC, which is the state-of-the-art multiview video compression technique. The authors suggest that Advanced Screen Content Coding can be efficiently used within the new Versatile Video Coding (VVC) technology. Nevertheless a reference multiview extension of VVC does not exist yet, therefore, for VVC-based coding, the experimental comparisons are left for future work.