Method and Apparatus for Encoding and Decoding a Texture Block Using Depth Based Block Partitioning

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016134874-A1
Application number	US-201615000539-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jan 19, 2016
Priority date	Jul 19, 2013
Publication date	May 12, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

A method and apparatus for encoding and decoding a texture block using depth based block portioning, which includes an apparatus for decoding an encoded texture block of a texture image, and a partitioner, determines a portioning mask for the encoded texture block based on depth information associated to the encoded texture block, and the portioning mask defines a plurality of partitions and to associate a texture block element of the encoded texture block to a partition of the plurality of partitions of the encoded texture block, and a decoder decode the partitions of the plurality of partitions of the encoded texture block based on the portioning mask.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . An apparatus for decoding an encoded texture block of a texture image, the decoding apparatus comprising:
a partitioner configured to determine a portioning mask for the encoded texture block based on depth information associated to the encoded texture block, wherein the portioning mask is configured to:
define a plurality of partitions; and
associate a texture block element of the encoded texture block to a partition of the plurality of partitions of the encoded texture block; and
a decoder coupled to the partitioner and configured to decode the partitions of the plurality of partitions of the encoded texture block based on the portioning mask.

2 . The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the number of partitions forming the plurality of partitions is predetermined or is adaptively determined by analyzing the depth information associated to the texture block.

3 . The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the partitioner is further configured to determine the portioning mask in an iterative manner, wherein in each iteration a partition fulfilling predetermined selection criteria is further divided into sub-partitions until a predetermined termination-criterion is fulfilled or as long as a further-portioning-criterion is fulfilled, and wherein the texture block performs the initial partition used for the iterative portioning.

4 . The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the partitioner is further configured to:
associate the texture block element of the texture block to one of the plurality of partitions based on a comparison of a depth information value associated to the texture block element with a threshold value; and adaptively determine the threshold value by:
calculating an average value of the depth information values for the area associated with the texture block to be encoded, wherein setting the threshold value to the calculated average value;
calculating a weighted average of the depth information values for the area associated with the texture block to be encoded, wherein weights used in calculating the weighted average depend on a distance from a center of the texture block, and wherein setting the threshold value to the weighted average value; or
calculating a median value for the depth information values from the area associated with the texture block to be encoded, wherein setting the threshold value to the calculated median value.

5 . The apparatus according to claim 1 , further comprising:
a demultiplexer coupled to the partitioner and configured to extract encoded depth information from a bitstream; and a depth decoder coupled to the demultiplexer and configured to decode the encoded depth information to obtain the depth information associated to the encoded texture block.

6 . The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the demultiplexer is further configured to extract from a bitstream coding information for a first partition of the plurality of partitions of the encoded texture block separately from coding information for a second partition of the plurality of partitions of the texture block, and wherein the depth decoder is further configured to decode the first partition using the coding information, and wherein the coding information comprises one or more of the following: a prediction mode, a predictor index, a prediction direction, a reference picture index, a reference view index, a transform coefficient, a motion vector, and a coding context.

7 . An apparatus for decoding an encoded texture block of a texture image, the decoding apparatus comprising:
a receiver configured to receive a bitstream comprising coding information of the encoded partitions of the plurality of partitions of the texture block; a demultiplexer coupled to the receiver and configured to extract a coding mode indicator from the bitstream, wherein the coding mode indicator indicates which coding mode of a plurality of coding modes has been used to encode the texture block; and a depth based block portioning apparatus coupled to the demultiplexer, wherein the depth based block portioning apparatus comprises:
a partitioner coupled to the depth based block portioning apparatus and configured to determine a portioning mask for the encoded texture block, based on depth information associated to the encoded texture block, wherein the portioning mask is configured to:
define a plurality of partitions; and
associate a texture block element of the encoded texture block to a partition of the plurality of partitions of the encoded texture block; and

a decoder coupled to the partitioner and configured to decode the partitions of the plurality of partitions of the encoded texture block based on the portioning mask, and
wherein the depth based block portioning apparatus is configured to decode the encoded texture block according to a depth based block portioning decoding mode in case the coding mode indicator indicates a corresponding depth based block portioning coding mode was used to encode the texture block.

8 . The apparatus according to claim 7 , wherein the demultiplexer is further configured to:
extract the coding mode indicator for determining the decoding mode of the plurality of decoding modes to be used for decoding the encoded texture block per texture block; and/or extract an enabling or disabling indicator from the bitstream per group of pictures (GOP), per intra-period, per image, per slice or per coding unit, wherein the enabling or disabling indicator for the depth based block portioning coding mode is signaled in sequence parameter set (SPS), picture parameter set (PPS), prediction block set (PBS), video parameter set (VPS), picture header, slice header (SH), macroblock or in the coding unit syntax, and wherein the enabling or disabling indicator indicates whether the depth based block portioning coding mode is enabled or disabled for texture blocks received after the enabling or disabling indicator.

9 . The apparatus according to claim 7 , wherein the plurality of coding modes comprises a set of coding modes based on regular shaped portioning and one depth based block portioning coding mode, wherein each coding mode based on the regular shaped portioning has a mode specific coding mode indicator associated to it, which distinguishes the respective regular shaped portioning coding mode from the other regular shaped portioning coding modes, wherein the selection of the depth based block portioning coding mode is signaled by a flag added to only one of the coding mode indicators of the set of coding mode indicators, wherein the first value of the flag indicates that the regular shaped portioning coding mode associated to the coding mode indicator was selected, and wherein the second value of the flag signals that the depth based block portioning coding mode was selected.

10 . The apparatus according to claim 7 , wherein the depth based block portioning apparatus is further configured to map the portioning mask to a regular shaped partition, and wherein the depth based block portioning apparatus comprises a texture decoder configured to decode a consecutive encoded texture block based on the regular shaped portioning representation of the portioning mask or on information derived based on the regular shaped portioning representation of the portioning mask.

11 . A method for decoding an encoded texture block of a texture image, comprising:
determining a portioning mask for the encoded texture block based on depth information associated to the encoded texture block, wherein the portioning mask is configured to:
define a plurality of partitions; and
associate a texture block element of the encoded texture block to a part

Assignees

• Huawei Tech Co Ltd

Inventors

• Konieczny Jacek
• Jaeger Fabian

Classifications

• H04N13/161

  Encoding, multiplexing or demultiplexing different image signal components (for multi-view video sequence encoding H04N19/597) · CPC title

• H04N19/192

  the adaptation method, adaptation tool or adaptation type being iterative or recursive · CPC title

• H04N19/61

  in combination with predictive coding · CPC title

• H04N13/128

  Adjusting depth or disparity · CPC title

• H04N19/136 Primary

  Incoming video signal characteristics or properties · CPC title