Patent ID: 8274551

Claim:
A method of reconstructing a stereoscopic image from a stereoscopic image bitstream into which stereoscopic image data is inserted, the method comprising: parsing the stereoscopic image bitstream and extracting attribute information regarding the stereoscopic image from the stereoscopic image bitstream; extracting mixed image formation information representing a format for forming a mixed image by combining base-view and additional-view images, from the attribute information regarding the stereoscopic image; extracting arrangement order information representing an arrangement order of the base-view and additional-view images of the stereoscopic image in the mixed image including data of the base-view and additional-view images, from the attribute information regarding the stereoscopic image; and reconstructing the stereoscopic image using the stereoscopic image data extracted from the stereoscopic image bitstream, wherein the attribute information regarding the stereoscopic image is used to reproduce the reconstructed stereoscopic image in a two-dimensional or three-dimensional reproduction mode on a display device, wherein the mixed image formation information represents one of a side-by-side format, a vertical line interleaved format, a frame sequential format, and a base/additional-view sequence format which represents that the base and additional images are inserted into the base and sub elementary streams, respectively, and wherein at least one of the parsing the stereoscopic image bitstream, the extracting the mixed image formation information, the extracting the arrangement order information and the reconstructing the stereoscopic image is performed by a hardware processor.