Modified Pseudo-Cylindrical Mapping of Spherical Video Using Linear Interpolation of Empty Areas for Compression of Streamed Images

A panoramic video method comprising:

• receiving a series of a spherical image at a video input;
• performing a sinusoidal transform of the spherical image to generate a pseudo-cylindrical projection image that is non-rectangular and is mapped to a memory space wherein image pixels below a dividing line are moved to non-effective upper corners of the memory space that are outside the pseudo-cylindrical projection image, wherein image pixels below the dividing line are deleted to compress the memory space to a compressed memory space;
• generating fill-in pixels to fill non-effective areas of the compressed memory space;
• encoding the image pixels and the fill-in pixels in the compressed memory space for transmission as transmitted pixels;
• decoding the transmitted pixels to generate a recovered memory space;
• deleting fill-in pixels in the recovered memory space and moving image pixels from non-effective upper corners of the recovered memory space to recovered rows of pixels below the dividing line to generate a recovered pseudo-cylindrical projection image;
• performing an inverse sinusoidal transform on the recovered pseudo-cylindrical projection image to generate a recovered spherical image;
• and
• rendering the recovered spherical image in a spherical image space for display to a user.

A panoramic image compressor comprising:

• a panoramic image input for receiving a spherical image;
• a sinusoidal transformer that converts the spherical image to a pseudo-cylindrical projection image by multiplying a cosine of a latitude angle to a equatorial parallel with a longitudinal angle from a central meridian to generate an X location of an image pixel in the pseudo-cylindrical projection image;
• a memory space for storing the pseudo-cylindrical projection image;
• a pixel mover that moves image pixels within the memory space, wherein image pixels in the pseudo-cylindrical projection image that are on a first side of a dividing line are moved to corners of the memory space that are outside of the pseudo-cylindrical projection image;
• a row compressor for reducing the memory space to exclude rows on the first side of the dividing line, wherein rows of image pixels on the first side of the dividing line are discarded;
• and
• a pixel interpolator that generates interpolated pixels from two or more source pixels in the pseudo-cylindrical projection image and in the corners of moved image pixels, wherein the interpolated pixels are written to the memory space on a side opposite of the first side of the dividing line to fill remaining areas having no image pixels.