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Nikolaus Karpinsky, Song Zhang
Optics and Lasers in Engineering, Volume 50, Issue 2, February 2012
Abstract
We present a 3D video-encoding technique called Holovideo that is capable of encoding high-resolution 3D videos into standard 2D videos, and then decoding the 2D videos back into 3D rapidly without significant loss of quality. Due to the nature of the algorithm, 2D video compression such as JPEG encoding with QuickTime Run Length Encoding (QTRLE) can be applied with little quality loss, resulting in an effective way to store 3D video at very small file sizes. We found that under a compression ratio of 134:1, Holovideo to OBJ file format, the 3D geometry quality drops at a negligible level. Several sets of 3D videos were captured using a structured light scanner, compressed using the Holovideo codec, and then uncompressed and displayed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the codec. With the use of OpenGL Shaders (GLSL), the 3D video codec can encode and decode in realtime. We demonstrated that for a video size of 512×512, the decoding speed is 28 frames per second (FPS) with a laptop computer using an embedded NVIDIA GeForce 9400 m graphics processing unit (GPU). Encoding can be done with this same setup at 18 FPS, making this technology suitable for applications such as interactive 3D video games and 3D video conferencing.
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Additional Information
In this work we present a way to perform real-time encoding and decoding of high-resolution 3D scans by leveraging a graphics processing unit (GPU). The technique, entitled Holovideo, makes use of a virtual fringe projection unit to record phase patterns distorted by the 3D geometry. This virtual fringe projection unit is achieved through the OpenGL shading language (GLSL), allowing for both parallel encoding and decoding. Using this technique, compression ratios of over 300:1 can be achieved when compared with the OBJ file format at 30 frames per second on modest hardware. Recently, with the emergence of WebGL and support for GLSL within a web browser, the technique has been extended to work within a web browser requiring no extra software to be installed, allowing 3D video the opportunity for wide spread adoption.
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