The influence of a lossy compression on the quality of estimated depth maps

The paper considers the influence of a lossy compression of multiview video on the quality of estimated depth maps. We have encoded a set of views with commonly known compression techniques used in compact IP cameras: HEVC (MPEG H part 2 / H.265), A VC (MPEG 4 part 10 / H.264) and MPEG 2 part 2 / H.262. Basing on the decoded data we have estimated depth maps and rendered a set of the intermediate virtual views. A drop of the quality was studied by comparison of virtual views rendered out of the depth maps estimated from an uncompressed video. The obtained results show that with a reasonable compression rate, lower quality of virtual views is acceptable for real implementable FTV systems.