Viterbi-like joint optimization of stereo extraction for on-line rate adaptation in scalable multiview video coding

The concept of Quality Layers (QL) has been adopted in the SVC standard in order to ensure optimal rate adaptation of pre-coded video in the rate-distortion sense. We have previously extended QL to multiview scalable video for efficient transport of 3DTV over the Internet. However, it is not possible to use the QL method in applications that require real-time encoding since priority determination process assumes the availability of the whole stereo video sequence. In this work, a Viterbi-like on-line, joint optimization of right and left view rate-adaptation is proposed for real-time scalable stereo video coding (with one GoP delay). We assume that the encoder/extractor is aware of the available dynamic network bandwidth in order to perform rate-distortion optimized MGS layer selection for each GoP. Experimental results show that the performance of proposed on-line method is comparable to that of QL that would require the whole stereo sequence.