Mode selective interpolation for stereoscopic 3D video in frame-compatible top-bottom packing

Abstract

As a transition stage from a conventional 2D TV to a full stereoscopic 3D TV system, a frame-compatible format of fitting stereoscopic left and right images to a single frame of the existing 2D TV is required to utilize existing codec and transmission infrastructure. To meet this requirement, a frame-compatible top-bottom packing with a horizontal line offset is proposed, where the vertical resolutions of the stereoscopic left and right images are reduced by half. Then, the optimal interpolation mode for each line segment of the sub-sampled horizontal line is determined by exploiting parallax-compensated data as well as undeleted neighboring upper and lower horizontal lines. At the receiver, the discarded horizontal lines for the left and right images are reconstructed by the interpolation modes provided by the sender. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm improves the PSNR as much as 1.5-3dB comparing to conventional interpolation filters.