Multiviewpoint video coding with MPEG-2 compatibility

An efficient video coding scheme is presented as an extension of the MPEG-2 standard to accommodate the transmission of multiple viewpoint sequences on bandwidth-limited channels. With the goal of compression and speed, the proposed approach incorporates a variety of existing computer graphics tools and techniques. Construction of each viewpoint image is predicted using a combination of perspective projection of three-dimensional (3-D) models, texture mapping, and digital image warping. Immediate application of the coding specification is foreseeable in systems with hardware-based real-time rendering capabilities, thus providing fast and accurate constructions of multiple perspectives.