Viewport-dependent delivery schemes for stereoscopic panoramic video

Abstract

Stereoscopic panoramic or omnidirectional video is a key ingredient for an immersive experience in virtual reality applications. The user views only a portion of the omnidirectional scene at each time instant, hence streaming the whole stereoscopic panoramic or omnidirectional video in high quality is not necessary and will consume an unnecessary high bandwidth usage. In order to alleviate the problem of bandwidth wastage, viewport-dependent delivery schemes have been proposed, in which the part of the captured scene that is within the viewer's field of view is delivered at highest quality while the rest of the scene in lower quality. The low quality content is visible only after fast head movements for a short period, until the next periodic intra-coded picture that can be used for switching viewpoints is available. This paper proposes viewport-dependent delivery schemes for streaming of stereoscopic panoramic or omnidirectional video by using region-of-interest coding methods of MV-HEVC and SHVC standards. The proposed schemes avoid the need for frequent intra-coded pictures, and consequently in the performed experiments the streaming bitrate is reduced by more than 50% on average for the best schemes compared to a simulcast delivery method.