This commit moves various constants from PCCTMC3Common.h to a new
constants.h.  Hard coded values of constants have been replaced with
their symbolic name.

Sometimes it is useful to encode geometry without attributes.  However,
the common test condition configurations all enable attribute coding.
In order to avoid rewriting the configuration files, the
"disableAttributeCoding" option configures the encoder as if no
attributes are specified.

Reading and writing binary ply files is significantly faster than going
via formatted I/O.  This commit adds the --outputBinaryPly=1|0 option
to select writing either binary or ascii ply files.

Khaled Mammou authored Aug 27, 2018 and David Flynn committed Sep 03, 2018

Certain test sequences with 16-bit reflectance are actually 8-bit data that
has been scaled by 255.  This commit adds non-normative support to the
encoder and decoder to convert between the two representations through
the option "hack.reflectanceScale".

The dist2 values used by the pred/lift attribute coding schemes is
dependent upon the distances between points in the point cloud.  Using
the --positionQuantizationScale option to scale the input point cloud
therefore affects the required dist2 values.

This commit adds the --positionQuantizationScaleAdjustsDist2=1|0 option
to simplify the configuration of dist2.  When enabled, the encoder will
automatically scale any dist2 values by the squared position scale
factor.

Khaled Mammou authored Aug 22, 2018 and David Flynn committed Aug 29, 2018

This commit introduces automatic derivation of dist2 values by the
frontend.  Automatic derivation occurs if fewer than levelOfDetailCount
values are provided.  No syntax changes are made.

cfg update:
 - use single dist2 values based on existing config
 - ford: 16383 -> 16384

Khaled Mammou authored Aug 22, 2018 and David Flynn committed Aug 29, 2018

This commit removes the ability to vary quant_step_size on a per-LoD
basis.  This greatly simplifies the codec configuration, especially
when used in conjunction with dist2 derivation.

cfg update:
 - rename quantizationSteps* -> quantizationStep*
 - update quantizationStep* to single values:
   - lossless-geom lossy-attrs:        8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 [8bit]
   - lossless-geom nearlossless-attrs: no change
   - lossless-geom lossless-attrs:     no change
   - lossy-geom    lossy-attrs:        8                       [8bit]

 => 16-bit cat3 sequences are have 8-bit qs values multipled by 255

Khaled Mammou authored Aug 22, 2018 and David Flynn committed Aug 29, 2018

This commit updates the hard coded limit and default values, and
updates the master configuration template.

Khaled Mammou authored Aug 22, 2018 and David Flynn committed Aug 29, 2018

This commit replaces the hard coded threshold values with APS signalling.
The default configuration maintains the hard-coded threshold values based
on bitdepth.

This option was added to use the original CfP response output position
rounding after the switch to integer point clouds.  It is not used and
its effect is barely noticeable in the objective distortion metric.
Furthermore, the encoder and decoder behaviour is different if the
option is enabled.

This commit allows the attribute codec to be parametrised by attribute
bitdepth.  The attribute bitdepth is signalled in the attribute's sequence
parameter set description.  The specified bitdepth affects cliping in the
attribute prediction and reconstruction process.

This commit allows individual payloads to be inserted into the decoder
rather than the decoder expecting to decode each payload in a fixed
order.

When an output pointcloud is ready, the decoder will call a user
supplied callback with the conforming output pointcloud.  The user
may choose to rescale this point cloud as necessary.

This commit removes the "lossless" geometry bypass coding mode that simply
skipped coding of geometry and required the decoder to read the geometry
from the source video.  Bypass coding mode is replaced by octree coding.

This commit rewrites the codec high-level syntax:

 - the bitstream is divided into "bricks" (akin to an AVC/HEVC
   slice/tile).

 - sequence, geometry and attribute parameter sets describe the coding
   parameters in use generally and for a specific brick.

 - marshalling the bitstream payloads to a file format is achieved using
   a type-length-value encoding scheme.

Additionally, the triSoup bitstream scale and translation values have
been unified with (replaced by) the octree counterparts.  For
compatibility, existing command line parameters continue to function
as before.

NB: this commit does not incorporate flexibility in the decoding order.
The decoder requires the bitstream to be presented in a fixed order.

The IntegerLift name is misleading in light of a separate coding method
that uses lifting predict and update operators.  This commit renames
the method to specify it is a prediction-only scheme.

Khaled Mammou authored Jun 30, 2018 and David Flynn committed Aug 20, 2018

This commit implements a lifting scheme optimized for lossy attribute
compression, consisting of predict/update operators, and an adaptive
quantization strategy.

Khaled Mammou authored Jun 30, 2018 and David Flynn committed Aug 20, 2018

Adaptively pick the number of neighbours considered during the
prediction based on analysis of the reconstructed attribute values of
the neighbours.

From m42642, this is performed by computing the maximum difference
between any two reconstructed attribute values of a points neighbours.
If the variability is higher than a threshold, then apply a
rate-distortion optimization procedure to choose between using either
a single neighbour or all neighbours. The index of the best prediction
strategy is arithmetically encoded.

This commit:
 - implements the m42642 method
 - moves buildPredictors into transform-specific attribute encoding/decoding
 - adds quantizationStepsChroma
 - renames quantizationSteps -> quantizationStepsLuma

df: fixed incorrect application of quantizationStepsLuma|Chroma
df: updated cat3 cfg to specify quantizationStepsChroma
df: fixed header encoding if quantizationStepsChroma missing

This commit removes the searchRange option that was set to 0 by m42538.

In the contextualisation of occupancy coding using neighbour patterns,
this commit replaces the case when neighbour contextualisation is
disabled with a constraint that restricts neighbour contextualisation
only examine the direct siblings of a node.

The restriction ensures that at most three neighbours may be present
for a node.

The configuration option "neighbourContextualisation=1" is replaced with
"neighbourContextRestriction=0".

This commit aims to reduce te amount of copy+paste code used to
support the three different geometry coding modes by unifying them
into a single flow.

This commit adds a DecoderParameters struct to reduce the overhead of
adding extra parameters.

This commit aims to reduce the overload on the --mode option and to
restore it to the previous encode/decode functionality.  To this end,
a new option (--geometryCodec=...) is added that selects the geometry
codec.

Version v1.0 use of --mode=... is supported.

Philip A. Chou authored Mar 29, 2018 and David Flynn committed Jun 05, 2018

This commit does not add the triangle soup geometry compressor to TMC3,
rather.  Rather, it adds a means to call out to TMC1 binaries to perform
the compression, integrate the results into the bitstream.

Attribute compression is performed natively by the TMC13 codec.

Rather than coding all syntax elements for both transform types
irrespective of the in-use type, this commit codes only those that
are necessary for a given transform type.

Philip A. Chou authored Apr 03, 2018 and David Flynn committed Jun 05, 2018

This commit introduces the rahtLeafDecimationDepth parameter to allow
chroma sub-sampling by decimating the coefficients in the bottom n
levels of the tree.

The default value of 3 provides chroma sub-sampling by a factor of 2
in each dimension.

Philip A. Chou authored Mar 25, 2018 and David Flynn committed Jun 05, 2018

This commit ports the Region Adaptive Hierarchical Transform for
attribute coding with colour and reflectance variants.

Khaled Mammou authored Mar 25, 2018 and David Flynn committed May 17, 2018

This commit reduces the number of nearest neighbours used in attribute
prediction to 4 from 8 in order to reduce memory usage.

Extracted-from: http://wg11.sc29.org/svn/repos/MPEG-I/Part5-PointCloudCompression/CE/CE0/CE0.1/trunk@1357


Reintegrated-by:  <dflynn@blackberry.com>

Khaled Mammou authored Mar 25, 2018 and David Flynn committed May 17, 2018

This commit removes the ability to control the quantization dead-zone
parameters since they have always been identical to the step size.

Rather than hard-coding the dead-zone size parameter to be the same as
the step size, this commit:

 - Sets the dead-zone to be ±(2 * stepsize / 3) rather than ±stepsize

 - Does not narrow the interval following the dead-zone.

Extracted-from: http://wg11.sc29.org/svn/repos/MPEG-I/Part5-PointCloudCompression/CE/CE0/CE0.1/trunk@1357


Reintegrated-by:  <dflynn@blackberry.com>

Ohji Nakagami authored Apr 13, 2018 and David Flynn committed May 11, 2018

This commit eliminates the blending of point attribute values during
the attribute transfer process used in geometry quantisation by forcing
the blending weight to be 0|1 (m42141).

m42538 also recommends to disable the bounded search of the closest
attribute from the contributing set by setting searchRange=0.  This is
reflected by a change to the software defaults and configuration.

This commit provides an implementation of m42239, permitting early
coding termination of sub-trees that contain few points:

 - the so-called IDCM feature uses an eligibility criteria prior
   to permitting an encoder mode decision.

 - the feature may be controlled via the command line / config file
   using the --inferredDirectCodingMode=1|0 option

This commit provides an implementation of m42238 to code occupancy:

 - a node's child occupancy is contextualised based on the adjacent
   neighbours of the parent node.

 - when an isolated node is occupied by only a single child, the
   sub-node address [0,7] is directly coded instead of the 8-bit
   occupancy word.

 - collection of neighbour occupancy is performed using a scatter/
   gather operation upon the insertion of each child node into the
   fifo queue.

 - the feature may be controlled via the command line / config file
   using the --neighbourContextualisation=1|0 option

git-svn-id: http://wg11.sc29.org/svn/repos/MPEG-I/Part5-PointCloudCompression/TM/TMC3/trunk@1341 94298a81-5874-47c9-aab8-bfb24faeed7f