Binocular-Combination-Oriented Perceptual Rate-Distortion Optimization for Stereoscopic Video Coding

In the chain of stereoscopic video processing, stereoscopic video coding and viewing are usually two independent stages. Conventional stereoscopic video coding puts an emphasis on improving the coding efficiency by seeking the optimal tradeoff between the coding bit rate and the signal-based distortion, while neglecting the perceptual behaviors of binocular combination when stereoscopic video is viewed by human beings. In this paper, we propose to utilize binocular combination to optimize the stereoscopic video coding from the perspective of perceptual quality measurement. Specifically, we propose a novel binocular-combination-oriented measurement for visual distortion and then derive the Lagrange multiplier for the binocular-combination-oriented rate-distortion optimization (RDO). Via extensive subjective tests, the results show that the proposed perceptual RDO can save more than 5% BD rate over the traditional RDO in multiview extension of High Efficiency Video Coding for stereoscopic video coding.