A Temporal Synchronization Scheme to reduce and compensate for temporal asynchrony in wireless 3D video streaming

Abstract

Although 3D video has become popular, successful 3D video streaming over wireless networks involves a number of challenges. Due to the frequent frame damages and losses in wireless networks, temporal asynchrony occurs and results in serious visual fatigue for viewers. In order to provide higher quality 3D video, this paper proposes a new scheme termed the Temporal Synchronization Scheme (TSS) for live 3D video streaming. TSS delivers video frames for the left and right views in the same frame sequence with the same transmission priority, and it compensates for frame damage and losses during the decoding phase. In addition, a new metric called the Stereoscopic Temporal Variation Index (STVI) is proposed; it measures the degree of temporal asynchrony in 3D video. Subjective assessments demonstrate that STVI is an objective metric for measuring subjective quality given that it exhibits a strong positive correlation with the subjective MOS rating. This paper demonstrates that TSS significantly improves the visual quality of 3D videos given the use of STVI and the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) even when frame damage and losses occur. The contributions of the paper are as follows: i) The proposed TSS is the first scheme to address the temporal asynchrony issue in live 3D video streaming over wireless networks. ii) TSS only requires slight modifications to decoders. iii) A new metric (i.e., STVI) is proposed to measure the degree of temporal asynchrony in 3D videos. Therefore, 3D video streaming over wireless networks can be performed with temporal synchronization, and it is expected using TSS will reduce visual fatigue.