  We propose a rate-distortion optimization method for 3D videos based on
visual discomfort estimation. We calculate visual discomfort in the encoded
depth maps using two indexes: temporal outliers (TO) and spatial outliers (SO).
These two indexes are used to measure the difference between the processed
depth map and the ground truth depth map. These indexes implicitly depend on
the amount of edge information within a frame and on the amount of motion
between frames. Moreover, we fuse these indexes considering the temporal and
spatial complexities of the content. We test the proposed method on a number of
videos and compare the results with the default rate-distortion algorithms in
the H.264/AVC codec. We evaluate rate-distortion algorithms by comparing
achieved bit-rates, visual degradations in the depth sequences and the fidelity
of the depth videos measured by SSIM and PSNR.
