Decoding complexity reduction in projection-based light-field 3D displays using self-contained HEVC tiles

Abstract

The goal of this work is to provide a low complexity video decoding solution for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) streams in applications where only a region of the video frames is needed to be decoded. This paper studies the problem of creating self-contained (i.e., independently decodable) partitions in the HEVC streams. Further, the requirements for building self-contained regions are described, and an encoder-side solution is proposed based on HEVC tile feature. A particular application of self-contained tiles targets the type of light-field 3D displays, which employ a dense set of optical engines to recreate the light field. Correspondingly, such 3D displays require a dense set of input views and therefore the partial decoding of bitstreams helps providing less complex and consequently real-time decoding and processing. The simulation results show a significant increase in decoding speed at the cost of a minor increase in storage capacity.