Fast disparity estimation utilizing depth information for multiview video coding

Multiview video coding (MVC) improves the coding efficiency by motion estimation (ME) and disparity estimation (DE). ME and DE at encoder side involve in heavy computation, which needs to be further reduced for practical applications. This paper presents fast disparity estimation by utilizing depth information to reduce DE´s computational complexity. First, the coordinate offset of the encoding block is calculated by 3D warping in the reference view frame utilizing depth map. Then the search region for DE is adjusted according to the coordinate offset. Experimental results verify that the proposed algorithm can save roughly 50% coding time with negligible loss of coding efficiency.