Multi View Video Coding (MVC, also known as MVC 3D) is a stereoscopic video coding standard for video compression that allows for encoding video sequences captured simultaneously from multiple camera angles in a single video stream.https://research.nokia.com/page/4988 Mobile 3D Video It uses the 2D plus Delta method and it is an amendment to the H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) video compression standard, developed jointly by MPEG and VCEG, 3DTV AT HOME: STATUS, CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS FOR DELIVERING A HIGH QUALITY EXPERIENCE with the contributions from a number of companies, such as Panasonic and LG Electronics.

MVC formatting is intended for encoding stereoscopic (two-view) 3D video, as well as free viewpoint television and multi-view 3D television. The Stereo High profile has been standardized in June 2009; the profile is based on the MVC tool set and is used in stereoscopic Blu-ray 3D releases.

Technical overview MVC is based on the idea that video recordings of the same scene from multiple angles share many common elements. It is possible to encode all simultaneous frames captured in the same elementary stream and to share as much information as possible across the different layers. This can reduce the size of the encoded video.https://wiki.libav.org/Blueprint/MultiAVFrame Libav MultiAVFrame Blueprint

Multiview video contains a large amount of inter-view statistical dependencies, since all cameras capture the same scene from different viewpoints. Therefore, combined temporal and inter-view prediction is important for efficient MVC encoding. A frame from a certain camera can be predicted not only from temporally related frames from the same camera, but also from the frames of neighboring cameras. These interdependencies can be used for efficient prediction.MPEG – Technologies – Introduction to Multiview Video Codinghttp://vision.princeton.edu/projects/2008/ECCV_stereo/paper_low-res.pdf Learning Two-View Stereo Matchinghttp://cs.nyu.edu/~fergus/teaching/vision_2012/6_Multiview_SfM.pdf Lecture 6: Multi-view Stereo & Structure from Motion

The method for this used in Multiview Video Coding for Blu-ray 3D movies is known as the 2D plus Delta algorithm, and the MVC specification itself is part of the H.264 standard as an amendment in H.264 “Annex H” of the specification.http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264 H.264 : Advanced video coding for generic audiovisual services

Open source support mostly missing

As of April 2015, there is no free and open-source software that supports software decoding of the MVC video compression standard. Popular open source H.264 and HEVC (H.265) decoders, such as those used in the FFmpeg and Libav libraries, simply ignore the second view and thus do not show the second view for stereoscopic views. In most cases, the reason for this support not being added is that MVC was not considered when the initial core H.264 and HEVC decoders code was written. Later amendment would as such often mean a lot of prerequisite code refactoring work and large changes its current architecture, with major work in untangling and reordering some code, and splitting different functions in existing decoder code into smaller chunks for simpler handling to in turn then make amendments such as MVC easier to add.

Some proof-of-concept work has however been done downstream in the past, but never made it upstream into official releases of FFmpeg or Libav.http://www.nt.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/file_uploads/theses/master/Optimized_implementation_of_a_MVC_decoder.pdf Jochen Britz – Optimized implementation of an MVC decoder – Master’s Thesis in Computer and Communication Technologyhttps://github.com/Britz/FFmpeg Britz – In terms of my master thesis, I work on a H.264 MVC implementation in libvacodec based on H.264 Annex H.

On March 8, 2016, the situation improved. Version 0.68 of the DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders Collection LAV Filtershttps://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters GitHub repository of LAV Filters project Retrieved 2016-03-30 was released by developer "Nevcairiel" (who also works for Media Player Classic — Home Cinema (MPC-HC)) with support of H.264 MVC 3D demuxing and decoding. With the aid of this release and FRIM http://www.videohelp.com/software/FRIM Videohelp download page Retrieved 2016-03-30 written by a programmer named “videohelp3d” http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=169651 developers page of "videohelp3d" Retrieved 2016-03-30 it is possible to write an AviSynth script to pre process a H.264 MVC 3D video clip which can then be opened by free 3D video player Binohttp://bino3d.org/index.html Home page of Bino - a free 3D video player Retrieved 2016-03-30 and then shown as red — cyan anaglyph video for example.

The usage of the FRIM AviSynth plugin (FRIMSource) is described on “videohelp3d” home page. LAV Filters can be used to get audio from H.264 MVC 3D video clip. The developer http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=156191&page=1029 developers page of "Nevcairiel" (at bottom of page) Retrieved 2016-03-30 posted that in a future release of, it might be possible that LAV Video renders the video as Side-by-Side directly.

Patent holders The following organizations hold patents that contributed to the development of MVC technology, listed in a patent pool by MPEG LA.

OrganizationActive patentsExpired patentsTotal patentsPanasonic60741648LG Electronics85287Dolby Laboratories77380Fraunhofer65065Fujitsu59362Mitsubishi Electric282149GE31031Tagivan II LLC27027Siemens14923Columbia University01717Maxell14014Thomson Licensing01414Koninklijke KPN N.V.101313Nippon Telegraph and Telephone808NTT Docomo606Sony505Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute213HP Inc.011

See also 2D plus Delta 2D-plus-depth Stereoscopic video coding Digital 3D Stereoscopic TDVision 3D television 3D display 3-D film Crosstalk Stereoscopy 3D Blu-ray Disc List of 3D films

References

External links Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories – Multiview Video Coding project MPEG – Technologies – Introduction to Multiview Video Coding MPEG – Technologies – Introduction to 3D Video MPEG – Visions – 3D Video Vision Nokia Research Center – Mobile 3D Video project and MVC source code NetBlender – MVC encoding solution for 3D Blu-ray authoring TDVision Systems, Inc – Stereoscopic decoding patents: