Abstract
The authors propose efficient hybrid error resilience and error concealment (ER‐EC) algorithms for H.264 3D video‐plus‐depth (3DV + D) transmission over error‐prone channels. At the encoder, content‐adaptive pre‐processing ER mechanisms are implemented by applying the context adaptive variable length coding (CAVLC), the slice structured coding, and the explicit flexible macro‐block ordering. At the decoder, a post‐processing EC algorithm with multi‐proposition schemes is implemented to recover the lost 3DV colour frames. The convenient EC hypothesis is adopted based on the lost macro‐blocks size mode, the faulty view, and the frame types. For the recovery of the lost 3DV depth frames, an encoder‐independent decoder‐dependent depth‐assisted EC algorithm is suggested. It exploits the previously estimated colour disparity vectors (DVs) and motion vectors (MVs) to estimate more additional depth‐assisted MVs and DVs. After that, the optimum colour‐plus‐depth DVs and MVs are accurately selected by employing the directional interpolation EC algorithm and the decoder MV estimation algorithm. Finally, a weighted overlapping block motion and disparity compensation scheme is utilised to reinforce the performance of the proposed hybrid ER‐EC algorithms. Experimental results on standard 3DV + D sequences show that the proposed hybrid algorithms have superior objective and subjective performance indices.