Improved Tile Format of Stereoscopic Video for 3-D TV Broadcasting

Tile format is a new frame packing arrangement for the first generation of 3-D TV broadcasting services. It puts the left- and right-eye images of each stereoscopic image pair into a single composition frame that allows the service provider to reuse existing production and distribution infrastructure for offering 3-D TV services. Different from frame compatible formats, the tile format composition does not down-sample the left- and right-eye images and, thus, provides a higher video quality for both 3-D and 2-D display. The problem with the tile format is that it creates artificial edges in the right-eye image and introduces visible tiling artifacts around the artificial edges after compression. This brief paper presents a simple modification to the tile format composition method that significantly reduces the tiling artifacts. Experimental results show that local PSNRs around artificial edges are improved by over 1 dB.