Stereoscopic/3D Video Quality Measurement

Promoting quality within the context of agile software development, it is extremely important as well as useful to improve not only the knowledge and decision-making of project managers, product owners, and quality assurance leaders but also to support the communication between teams. In this context, quality needs to be visible in a synthetic and intuitive way in order to facilitate the decision of accepting or rejecting each iteration within the software life cycle. This article introduces a novel solution called Product Quality Evaluation Method (PQEM) which can be used to evaluate a set of quality characteristics for each iteration within a software product life cycle.

These articles on 3DTV and 3D movies were written over the last two decades of the 44year period since I began. They are illustrated with original photos and historical materials resulting from thousands of hours researching the technical and patent literature and attending and exhibiting at trade shows. I decided to publish them in a book as they have only existed in scattered locations and they have proven quite popular when I recently posted some of them on the net. They present information and viewpoints difficult or impossible to find that nicely supplement what is available elsewhere.

The comprehensive coverage of various trade shows held at the peak of the 3D frenzy (ca 2009-11) are a unique record of what was actually available in the market place at major international shows. To attend one of them would cost the average participant over $1000 and a week’s time, with many hours a day walking the floor, fighting the crowds and exhaustion, and very few would see or understand most of what was on display. This was easier for me as I had already spent 36 years studying 3D full time. I exerted the most effort at NAB (the National Association of Broadcasters) where I trudged the aisles about 8 hours a day for 5 days visiting most of the 3D relevant booths twice, and then spent several weeks reading and researching to put them into context. The patent and technical literature searches however occupied four decades. I also include several practical articles on making and viewing 3D video that include numerous tips not present in the many books and articles I have seen. I make no attempt to repeat the material in the many excellent books and countless articles that have appeared recently. Those who want a fairly comprehensive coverage of 3D technology should get the SPIE CD with many hundreds of articles from 1977 to 2009 ISBN-10: 0819476595 and subsequent proceedings, and of course for the diligent there is no substitute for the patent literature.

As I comment in several places, though thousands (or millions) have contributed to the technology that gave rise to the rebirth of 3D films and television, if I had to pick out just two, then I think Larry Hornbeck of Texas Instruments, who invented the DLP micromirror technology used for projection, and Brian Critchley of projector maker Digital Projection, who took the lead in researching and developing it into a workable cinema projector, deserve top honors. I continue to sell 3D hardware as a hobby and greatly enjoy hunting down obscure 3D films on the net (many of them never released theatrically in 3D and only distributed on 3D blu-ray in one part of the world, and so only seen in 3D by a tiny minority of the viewing public).

The file size and picture quality are factors to be considered for streaming, storage and transmitting videos
over networks. This work compares Cinepak, Intel, Microsoft Video and Indeo Codec for video
compression. The peak signal to noise ratio is used to compare the quality of such video compressed using
AVI codecs. The most widely used objective measurement by developers of video processing systems is
Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR). Peak Signal to Noise Ration is measured on a logarithmic scale and
depends on the mean squared error (MSE) between an original and an impaired image or video, relative to
(2n-1)2.
Previous research done regarding assessing of video quality has been mainly by the use of subjective
methods, and there is still no standard method for objective assessments. Although it has been considered
that compression might not be significant in future as storage and transmission capabilities improve, but at
low bandwidths compression makes communication possible.

More and more people are getting access to 3D; 3D-TV is a next expecting step in telecommunication. Before
being presented to the public, any 3D content has to be coded, compressed and transmitted. All these treatments
can impact the quality of the nal product, thus it is essential to have a measurement tool for the estimation
of the quality of stereoscopic content. Several studies have already modied the existing 2D quality metrics to
be able evaluate 3D images, however the results are not satisfying. In this work, we propose a full-reference
metric for a quality assessment of stereoscopic images employing the properties of binocular perception. The
principle of the metric estimates the probability of fusion, that can be obtained perceptually. The quality of one
view is assessed relatively to the other, and according to the result metric makes a decision, that is based on the
binocular fusion properties. The comparison between views is performed only on the salient area. It is detected
using the visual attention model based on the monocular depth cues and interest points. The metric has been
tested on the publicly available dataset, and its results are coherent to the subjective scores.
Keywords: S3D quality assessment, 3D imaging, Quality of experience, binocular perception

Manufacturers often express the performance of a 3D imaging device in various non-uniform ways for the lack of internationally recognized standard requirements for metrological parameters able to identify the capability of capturing a real scene. For this reason several national and international organizations in the last ten years have been developing protocols for verifying such performance. Ranging from VDI/VDE 2634, published by the Association of German Engineers and oriented to the world of mechanical 3D measurements (triangulation-based devices), to the ASTM technical committee E57, working also on laser systems based on direct range detection (TOF, Phase Shift, FM-CW, flash LADAR), this paper shows the state of the art about the characterization of active range devices, with special emphasis on measurement uncertainty, accuracy and resolution. Most of these protocols are based on special objects whose shape and size are certified with a known level of accuracy. By capturing the 3D shape of such objects with a range device, a comparison between the measured points and the theoretical shape they should represent is possible. The actual deviations can be directly analyzed or some derived parameters can be obtained (e.g. angles between planes, distances between barycenters of spheres rigidly connected, frequency domain parameters, etc.). This paper shows theoretical aspects and experimental results of some novel characterization methods applied to different categories of active 3D imaging devices based on both principles of triangulation and direct range detection.

It is the aim of most work with graphics, photography, and video to create vivid and compelling images. Though telepresence and virtual reality are new terms, there exists a vast body of research in stereoscopic vido and other fields with similar objectives. Most of this work has appeared in patent documents or obscure publications and is rarely cited. In order to stimulate research, a number of areas of interest are briefly reviewed and accompanied by extensive bibliographies. These include single camera and dual camera stereoscopy, corn-patible 3D recording and transmission, helmet mounted displays, field sequential stereo and head and eyetracking devices.

The International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA) is a bi-monthly open access peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of the Software Engineering & Applications. The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on understanding Modern software engineering concepts & establishing new collaborations in these areas.

3DTV Corporation has a variety ofnew products for stereoscopic computer graphics and video. There are inexpensive kits for frame sequential graphics on virtually every computer platform. A system for IBM PC compatibles has a 3DROM with games, animations, photos, tools, information, and a user configurable interface for parallel or serial ports with passthrough, status LED's and ajack for 3 new varieties of LCD shutter glasses.

With the popularity of stereoscopic movies and games, several researches are published.
stereoscopy, or S-3D, becomes one of hot topics, for a while, in
computer vision, computer graphics, psychology, and other related fields.
Lots of research works are proposed to solve issues in display technologies, signal post-processing,
human visual perception, and fundamental quality assessment.
These works all provide inspiring insights, significant solutions to some issues,
and even open questions for future research.
However, seldom works are started from the viewpoint of producers, or more specifically,
production studios that make stereoscopic films, visual effect, or games.

It is a necessary but challenging task for creative producers to have an idea
how the target audience might perceive when watching a stereoscopic film in a cinema during production.
That is, it is a problem of bringing target consumers' perception into producers' work-flow.
Moreover, during the pipeline of a S-3D production, much communication happens between experts with different profession,
including directors, producers, supervisors, layout artists, technical directors, coordinators and others.
Having an effective communicate and even a measurement of the stereoscopic effect is fundamental through the whole pipeline.

This paper proposes a novel metric, geometric perceived depth percentage (GPDP),
to numerate and depict the depth perception of a scene before rendering.
In addition to the geometric relationship between the object depth and focal distance,
GPDP also takes the screen width and viewing distance into account.
As a result, it provides a more intuitive mean for predicting stereoscopy and is universal across different viewing conditions.

Furthermore, based on GPDP, a practical tool is designed to visualize the stereoscopic perception
without the need of any 3D device or special environment.
The tool utilizes the stereoscopic comfort volume, GPDP-based shading schemes, depth perception markers,
and GPDP histograms as visual cues so that S-3D layout artists can set stereoscopic parameters more easily.
The tool can be easily implemented into any modern rendering pipeline,
including interactive Autodesk Maya~\cite{autodesk_maya} and off-line Pixar's RenderMan renderer~\cite{prman}.
It has been used in several production projects including commercial ones.

Sometimes, we might need to fine-tune depth effect in post-processing
when time and budget is not allowed for time-consuming in-production pipeline,
or there is no 3D scenes to work on (ex, the video is a mix of real shooting and CG animation).
An 3D experience optimization by fixing visual fatigue and depth perception is proposed, too.
Five principles are proposed to reduce visual fatigue and enhance depth perception.

Finally, several user studies show that GPDP is a proper depth perception indicator and
the proposed tool can make the stereoscopic parameter setting process more easy and efficient.

A variety of low cost devices for capturing, editing and displaying field sequential 60 cycle stereoscopic video have recently been marketed by 3D TV Corp. and others. When properly used, they give very high quality images with most consumer and professional equipment. Our stereoscopic multiplexers for creating and editing field sequential video in NTSC or component(SVHS, Betacain, RGB) and Home 3D Theater system employing LCD eyeglasses have made 3D movies and television available to a large audience.