Video quality improvement for multi-camera systems using camera control

Multiview video captured by a multi-camera system has been widely used in many applications such as environmental surveillance, industrial inspection and 3D television. A multiview video contains a vast amount of data required to be transmitted and/or stored, and therefore compression is essential. However, distortion or artifacts are usually witnessed in the reconstructed multiview video after a raw multiview video is compressed at a limited bit-rate. Previous results on video compression mainly focus on the refinements of compression algorithms to improve the quality of reconstructed multiview videos. This paper uses a camera control for video capture to improve the quality of reconstructed multiview videos at a limited bit-rate. Individual cameras are controlled to adjust their pan angles and focal lengths at the video acquisition stage to compensate for the difference in feature-point locations. The optimal pan angle and focal length are designed for each camera. Experimental results validate that the proposed method capturing with camera control outperforms the conventional method capturing without camera control and the heuristic method of “keeping the object of interest in the image center”.