Optimizing peer grouping for live free viewpoint video streaming

Abstract

In free viewpoint video, a user can pull texture and depth videos captured from two nearby reference viewpoints to synthesize his chosen intermediate virtual view for observation via depth-image-based rendering (DIBR). For users who are observing the same video at the same time but not necessarily from the same virtual viewpoint, they have incentive to pull the same reference views so that the streaming cost can be shared. On the other hand, in general distortion of a synthesized virtual view increases with its distance to the reference views, and so a user also has incentive to select reference views that tightly "sandwich" his chosen virtual view, minimizing distortion. In a previous work, reference view sharing strategiesones that optimally trade off shared streaming costs with synthesized view distortions-were investigated for the case when users are first divided into groups, and each user group independently pulls two reference views and shares the resulting streaming cost. In this paper, we generalize the previous notion of user group, so that a user can simultaneously belong to two groups, and each group shares the streaming cost of a single view. We also aim to find a Nash Equilibrium (NE) solution of reference view selection, which is stable and from which no one has incentive to unilaterally deviate. Specifically, we first derive a lemma based on known properties of synthesized view distortion functions. We then design a search algorithm to find a NE solution, leveraging on the derived lemma to reduce search complexity. Experimental results show that the stable NE solution increases the overall cost only slightly when compared to the unstable optimal reference selection that gives the lowest overall cost. Further, a larger network will give a lower average cost for each user, and thus, users tend to join large networks for cooperation.

MVP2P: Layer-dependency-aware live MVC video streaming over peer-to-peer networks

“…network reconfiguration cost). In [36], Yuan et al assume that each peer has two reference views. Each peer simultaneously joins in two overlay networks of its reference views so that the peers can efficiently share their reference views.…”

Data format and view synthesis for free-viewpoint video streaming of super multiview video

“…Method in [24] proposed coding architectures based on multiple descrip tion coding (MDC), for stereo contents streaming. In [25] the problem related to diversity of the requested viewpoint by user is investigated. Method in [26] proposed layered quality-of experience (QOE) for free viewpoint streaming over overlay networks, while the optimal free-viewpoint synthesis in such a scenario was not investigated.…”