3D video coding via motion compensation of superpixels

Most of the past and current video coders partition the input frames into regular blocks of pixels that are approximated by a motion estimation unit and coded via a block-based transform. A better performance can be obtained by adapting the size of the approximated region to the geometry and the characteristics of the objects captured by the camera. The paper presents a novel coding scheme for video+depth signals that combines a 3D object identification unit with an object-oriented motion estimation strategy. Object identification is obtained via a joint luminance-depth oversegmentation of the acquired scene which partitions the input scene into superpixels. The procedure can be easily replicated at the decoder, and therefore, does not imply the coding and transmission of object masks. The scheme outperforms the rate-distortion performance of H.264/AVC of 2 dB with a reasonable increment of the complexity for motion estimation and segmentation.