Interlayer Simplified Depth Coding for Quality Scalability on 3D High Efficiency Video Coding

A quality scalable extension design is proposed for the upcoming 3D video on the emerging standard for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). A novel interlayer simplified depth coding (SDC) prediction tool is added to reduce the amount of bits for depth maps representation by exploiting the correlation between coding layers. To further improve the coding performance, the coded prediction quadtree and texture data from corresponding SDC-coded blocks in the base layer can be used in interlayer simplified depth coding. In the proposed design, the multiloop decoder solution is also extended into the proposed scalable scenario for texture views and depth maps, and will be achieved by the interlayer texture prediction method. The experimental results indicate that the average Bjøntegaard Delta bitrate decrease of 54.4% can be gained in interlayer simplified depth coding prediction tool on multiloop decoder solution compared with simulcast. Consequently, significant rate savings confirm that the proposed method achieves better performance.