Researcher Brian Micallef has been able to find a way to reduce the time it takes for 3D video to be compressed, to about one tenth of the original time.

Brian Micallef, a post-graduate researcher with the Department of Communications and Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology, did this by developing techniques to substantially reduce the amount of computations required.

Other advanced compression techniques were also developed to compress the data required to transmit such videos by a further 15 per cent.

These improvements will allow such 3D video to be used on mobile devices.

3D TV was first rolled out in 2009, but research went on to improve the feeling of actually being there. The solution was free-viewpoint TV, which allows free-viewing navigation within a 3D scene, and thus the ability to view around objects.

To support this service, a new 3D video format was internationally conformed. However, its enormous amount of data and its complex requirement for compression were still a challenging task for transmission, especially for mobile technology. The research in which Dr Micallef was involved will solve this impasse.

This study, through the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship Scheme (Malta), was published in an international journal article and featured in eight international conference papers.