Patent ID: 8542739

Claim:
A method of estimating a disparity vector of a multi-view picture, the method comprising: determining a disparity vector between two frames having a different viewpoint from a current viewpoint; and calculating a disparity vector of a current viewpoint frame using the disparity vector between the two frames and a translation parameter, wherein at least one of the determining and the calculating is performed by a processor of a computer system, the two frames having the different viewpoint from the current viewpoint are first and second viewpoint frames, and the disparity vector of the current viewpoint frame is dv 2 which is calculated using dv 2 =dv 1 ×cd 2 /cd 1 , where dv 1 denotes the disparity vector between the two frames which is calculated using a certain block of the first viewpoint frame and a first block of the second viewpoint frame corresponding to the certain block, dv 2 denotes a disparity vector between the first block of the second viewpoint frame and a second block of the current viewpoint frame corresponding to the first block, and cd 2 /cd 1 is a value corresponding to the translation parameter, or the disparity vector of the current viewpoint frame is dv 4 which is calculated using dv 4 =dv 3 ×cd 4 /cd 3 , where dv 3 denotes the disparity vector between the two frames which is calculated using a certain block of the first viewpoint frame and a first block of the second viewpoint frame corresponding to the certain block, dv 4 denotes a disparity vector of the second viewpoint frame of a co-located second block of the current viewpoint frame of the first block, and cd 4 /cd 3 is a value corresponding to the translation parameter.