Advanced relative depth-map generation methods for 2D to 3D image and video conversion

3D立体电影或图像的质量和体验提供了新的价值，消费者愿意为此支付溢价。越来越多的电影院和家庭开始配备3D放映设备。不幸的是，可用的内容数量严重缺乏，创建和编辑这些内容的工具也严重缺乏。然而，有太多的2D非立体内容可用，其中有转换为3D的需求。电影工作室看到了将许多现有的2D电影转换成3D电影的巨大机会，因为这将扩大他们的消费者市场。目前，2D到3D的转换是非常费力的，主要是由训练有素的合成和编辑专家手动完成的。转换几分钟的镜头需要几个月的时间。此外，内容的转换必须准确，高质量，同时也要可行。随着3D格式被越来越多的人接受，消费者对3D的审查也在增加，这一点也越来越令人担忧。本研究中提出的工作将有助于创建算法和工具，以便在最小和直观的用户帮助下，从现有的2D内容更有效和准确地转换3D立体内容。预计结果将大大改进深度图生成的方法，无论是在准确性和简单性方面，都比目前可用的方法要好。此外，预计这项研究最终将使内容创作者或消费者能够通过简单的控制，选择性地调整整个场景或单个场景对象的深度，从而微调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 and more movie theatres and homes are becoming equipped to display 3D. Unfortunately, the amount of content available is severely lacking as are the 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 assistance. 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.