Fast Freeviewpoint Video Synthesis Algorithm for Sports Scenes In this paper, we report on a parallel freeviewpoint video synthesis algorithm that can efficiently reconstruct a highquality 3D scene representation of sports scenes. The proposed method focuses on a scene that is captured by multiple synchronized cameras featuring widebaselines. The following strategies are introduced to accelerate the production of a freeviewpoint video taking the improvement of visual quality into account: (1) a sparse point cloud is reconstructed using a volumetric visual hull approach, and an exact 3D ROI is found for each object using an efficient connected components labeling algorithm. Next, the reconstruction of a dense point cloud is accelerated by implementing visual hull only in the ROIs; (2) an accurate polyhedral surface mesh is built by estimating the exact intersections between grid cells and the visual hull; (3) the appearance of the reconstructed presentation is reproduced in a viewdependent manner that respectively renders the nonoccluded and occluded region with the nearest camera and its neighboring cameras. The production for volleyball and judo sequences demonstrates the effectiveness of our method in terms of both execution time and visual quality.

An Improved Depth Map Estimation Algorithm For View Synthesis and Multiview Video Coding In this paper, an improved algorithm to generate a smooth and accurate depth map for view synthesis and multiview video coding is developed. For each block in the target view, the algorithm first uses epipolar geometry to find its matched block in the reference view, from which an initial depth is obtained using the triangulation method and depth projection. 3D warping is then applied to refine the depth. In addition, a structural similarity and maximum likelihoodbased approach is developed to fuse the depth estimations from multiple references. Finally, the depth map is smoothed via segmentation and plane fitting. Compared to existing 3D warpingbased depth estimation, the proposed algorithm can achieve up to 4 dB improvement in view synthesis, while requires much fewer bits to encode the depth map. Experimental results in multiview video coding show that the proposed method can outperform the H.264 JMVC software by more than 1 dB.