NCL+Depth: extending NCL for stereo/autostereoscopic 3D displays

Abstract

The availability of 3D-enabled displays, both stereoscopic and autostereoscopic ones, is growing in the market. However, most of the current multimedia digital TV standard for describing interactive applications does not take advantage of these technologies. A useful and flexible way to codify 3D-video to work with both stereoscopic and autoestereoscopic displays is using video plus depth-per-pixel information. In order to improve authoring of interactive digital TV applications written in NCL (Nested Context Language), the Latin-American standard for digital TV, this paper proposes some extensions to this language to allow multimedia authors to be aware of depth information. Among the new features provided it is the control and animation of depth information for synthetic and non-synthetic media objects. As it is based on 2D+depth information, the proposed extensions will enable multimedia authors to take advantage of stereo and autostereoscopic displays, and also are compatible with previous versions of NCL players.