The Effect of Frame Rate on 3D Video Quality and Bitrate

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different frame rates affect 3D video quality and bitrate, finding that beyond 60 fps improvements are negligible and that reducing frame rate can optimize quality under bandwidth constraints.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of 3D video quality versus bitrate at various frame rates, offering practical insights for network rate adaptation.

Findings

Frame rates above 60 fps are visually indistinguishable.

Reducing frame rate can improve perceived quality under bandwidth limitations.

Optimal quality is achieved by decreasing frame rate rather than increasing compression.

Abstract

Increasing the frame rate of a 3D video generally results in improved Quality of Experience (QoE). However, higher frame rates involve a higher degree of complexity in capturing, transmission, storage, and display. The question that arises here is what frame rate guarantees high viewing quality of experience given the existing/required 3D devices and technologies (3D cameras, 3D TVs, compression, transmission bandwidth, and storage capacity). This question has already been addressed for the case of 2D video, but not for 3D. The objective of this paper is to study the relationship between 3D quality and bitrate at different frame rates. Our performance evaluations show that increasing the frame rate of 3D videos beyond 60 fps may not be visually distinguishable. In addition, our experiments show that when the available bandwidth is reduced, the highest possible 3D quality of experience can be achieved by adjusting (decreasing) the frame rate instead of increasing the compression ratio. The results of our study are of particular interest to network providers for rate adaptation in variable bitrate channels.