DEPTH CODING AS AN ADDITIONAL CHANNEL TO VIDEO SEQUENCE

摘要

A 3D video coding apparatus and method which selectively codes video data from a plurality of video sources to include depth information. Coding may be performed by combining depth information with view information, such as RGB, YCrCb, or YUV, and coded together with the view information as, RGBD, YCrCbD or YUVD. An apparatus may selectively code the depth information based on a depth format flag to include no depth information (e.g. a 2D format) or include depth information as a chroma channel. The depth information may be coded separately or together with YCrCb based on a coding cost or rate distortion estimate to encode the video information to obtain the highest quality.