Sampling in transform domain for improved QoE of 3D frame-compatible video coding

3D frame-compatible formats are considered a promising solution to 3D distribution due to their compatibility to existing systems. However, since sub-sampling is applied in order to pack the left and right views into a single frame, the Quality of Experience (QoE) has been a major concern. Existing methods in the related literature make use of low-pass filtering to halve the original samples, leaving room for further QoE improvement. In this paper, the sub-sampling is performed in the transform domain and designed to coincide with the H.264/AVC coding structure. The methodology compensates for the fact that sub-sampling tends to truncate the same information as the encoder quantization. In this way, the QoE degradation additionally caused by the sub-sampling is minimized. Experimental results show a significant improvement over competing methods, roughly 2.5dB higher and 75% BD-rate reduction on average. In addition, the evaluation criterion is also discussed by taking into account the impacts of sampling and coding process.