Improved depth-map generation methods for user-assisted 2D to 3D image and video conversion

3D立体电影或图像的质量和体验提供了消费者愿意支付溢价的新价值。 越来越多的电影正在以3D形式放映，因为成千上万的影院配备了3D显示器，以及3D消费电视机、摄像机和投影机的可用性。 随之而来的是对内容和工具的需求，以创建和编辑该内容。 然而，有大量的2D非立体内容可用，其中需要转换为3D。 电影制片厂看到了将许多现有的2D电影转换为3D的巨大机会，因为这将增加他们的消费市场。目前，2D到3D的转换非常费力，主要由训练有素的合成和编辑专家手动完成。转换几分钟的镜头需要几个月。此外，内容的转换必须准确和高质量，同时也是可行的。 随着消费者对3D格式的审查越来越多，这正成为一个越来越多的问题。 这项研究中提出的工作将有助于创建算法和工具，使现有的2D内容的3D立体内容的转换更有效，更准确，最小和直观的用户辅助。预计结果是在准确性和使用简单性方面大大改进的方法，用于深度图生成，而不是目前可用的方法。此外，预计拟议的研究最终将使内容创作者或消费者能够通过简单的控件选择性地调整整个场景或单个场景对象的深度来微调3D体验。

The quality and the experience of a 3D stereoscopic movie or image provides new value for which consumers are willing to pay a premium. Increasingly, more movies are being screened in 3D as thousands of theatres become equipped to display 3D, as well as the availability of 3D consumer televisions cameras and projectors. With this comes a demand for content and tools to create and edit that content. However, there is a plethora of 2D non-stereoscopic content available, of which there is a demand to convert to 3D. Movie studios see great opportunity in converting many existing 2D movies to 3D as this would increase their consumer market. Currently, conversion of 2D to 3D is extremely laborious and mostly done manually by trained compositing and editing experts. It takes months to convert minutes of footage. Furthermore, the conversion of content has to be accurate and of high quality, while also being feasible. This is becoming an increasing concern as consumer scrutiny of 3D increases as the format becomes increasingly accepted. The work proposed in this research will help to create algorithms and tools that will enable more efficient and accurate conversion of 3D stereoscopic content from existing 2D content, with minimal and intuitive user assitance. The outcome is anticipated to be much improved methods, both in accuracy and in simplicity of use, for depth map generation than what is currently available. Furthermore, the proposed research is anticipated to eventually enable content creators or consumers to fine-tune the 3D experience by selectively adjusting depth for entire scenes or individual scene objects via simple controls.