Joint disparity and motion estimation using optical flow for multiview Distributed Video Coding

Distributed Video Coding (DVC) is a video coding paradigm where the source statistics are exploited at the decoder based on the availability of Side Information (SI). In a monoview video codec, the SI is generated by exploiting the temporal redundancy of the video, through motion estimation and compensation techniques. In a multiview scenario, the correlation between views can also be exploited to further enhance the overall Rate-Distortion (RD) performance. Thus, to generate SI in a multiview distributed coding scenario, a joint disparity and motion estimation technique is proposed, based on optical flow. The proposed SI generation algorithm allows for RD improvements up to 10% (Bjøntegaard) in bit-rate savings, when compared with block-based SI generation algorithms leveraging temporal and inter-view redundancies.