3DTV view generation with virtual pan/tilt/zoom functionality

This paper presents a novel rendering algorithm based on depth image warping to support virtual pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) functionalities during 3D view generation. A method based on "3D-ness" knob is proposed for automatically specifying the virtual camera positions along a path, to model the PTZ mechanism in projective framework. Two novel quality enhancing techniques based on segmentation cues are proposed to add pan, tilt and zoom capabilities during arbitrary view synthesis. In addition to reduce the computational load that results in providing such functionalities, a novel selective warping scheme is presented to reduce the computational cost by as much as 40% while maintaining an acceptable quality of rendering results. Experiments are performed using standard "Breakdancers" and "Ballet" video sequences to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods as compared to currently published results.