Nonlinear depth representation for 3D video coding

The paper deals with nonlinear transformations of depth-sample values and their applications to multiview-plus-depth video coding. It is proposed to apply such a transformation prior to depth coding. For this transformation, the experiments demonstrate improved quality of the virtual views that are synthesized with use of the decoded depth. Such experiments were made for two versions of the prospective extensions of the Advanced Video Coding (MPEG-4 part 10, ITU-T Rec. H.264). standard. The experimental results are given for the scenario where multiview video is encoded independently from depth and also for the scenario where multiview video is coded jointly with depth.