Patent ID: 7489342

Claim:
A method for managing multiview videos, comprising the steps of: maintaining a reference picture list for each current frame of a plurality of multiview videos, the reference picture list indexing temporal reference pictures, spatial reference pictures and synthesized reference pictures of the plurality of multiview videos; and predicting each current frame of the plurality of multiview videos according to reference pictures indexed by the associated reference picture list, in which each current frame includes a plurality of macroblocks, and the predicting is macroblock adaptive according to a selected one of a plurality of prediction modes, and in which the predicting minimizes a cost function adaptively on a per macroblock basis according to m * = a ⁢ rg ⁢ ⁢ mi m ⁢ n ⁢ ⁢ J ⁡ ( m ) , where J(m)=D(m)+λR(m), and D is distortion, λ is a weighting parameter, R is rate, m indicates a set of candidate prediction modes, and m* indicates an optimal prediction mode that is selected based on a minimum cost.