3D Video Quality Evaluation with Depth Quality Variations

In this paper we present the effect of depth quality on 3D video perception on autostereoscopic displays. This study was done using objective as well as subjective evaluation (using Phillips monitor). The goal of this work was to understand the impact of depth image quality and compression on the perceived 3D experience. Another objective is to evaluate the use of depth image quality as a measure of 3D quality. The experiments were conducted using a multi-view point Philips 3D display that uses a single view and depth image. The displays are tested using subjective evaluation experiments. The results show that depth image can be compressed significantly, to 0.0007 bits per pixel, without affecting the 3D perception significantly. We found that there is a relation between the perception of depth, depth complexity and motion. Motion and complexity of the depth image have a strong influence on the acceptable depth quality in 3D videos. While depth quality gives useful information about 3D perception, additional work is necessary for developing objective metrics based on depth quality.