Patent ID: 8165201

Claim:
An encoding method that codes pictures at different viewpoints by synthesizing a picture at an intermediate viewpoint in multi-view video, the encoding method comprising: computing a disparity between pictures at different viewpoints; synthesizing a VSP picture at the intermediate viewpoint using the computed disparity, the VSP picture being an interpolation view synthesized from a neighboring V picture or a T picture, the V picture referring to a first picture in a viewpoint direction and the T picture referring to the V picture in a time direction; adding the VSP picture to a list of reference pictures; and predicting a motion by independently performing a first mode, in which coding is made in reference to the VSP picture, and a second mode, in which coding is made in reference to the V picture or the T picture, wherein the computing of the disparity comprises: extracting a feature point of each of the pictures; hierarchically segmenting regions of each of the pictures on the basis of the feature point; computing an initial disparity of a primitive block in each of the segmented regions; computing a disparity of each of pixels in the primitive block; computing a disparity of a sub-block having a smaller size than the primitive block; and computing a disparity of a block having a smaller size than the sub-block when a difference in cost between the primitive block and the sub-block is larger than a threshold value.