Patent ID: 7221366

Claim:
A computer-implemented process for rendering and displaying a frame of an interactive viewpoint video, comprising using a computer to perform the following process actions: identifying a current user-specified viewpoint; identifying a frame or frames from a group of contemporaneously captured video frames depicting a portion of the same scene and corresponding with a current temporal portion of the interactive viewpoint video being rendered that are needed to render the scene depicted therein from the identified viewpoint; inputting layered representations of each identified video frame comprising, a main layer comprising background color and background disparity values of pixels found within pre-determined sized areas in the frame surrounding pixels exhibiting depth discontinuities exceeding a prescribed threshold, and color and disparity values of pixels found outside said areas, and a boundary layer comprising foreground color, foreground disparity and alpha values of pixels found within said areas; rendering the frame of the interactive viewpoint video from the viewpoint currently specified by the user using the inputted layered frame representations and displaying the rendered frame.