Method for transmitting an immersive video

A method for transmitting an immersive video between a network unit and at least one item of viewing equipment enabling a plurality of users to view said immersive video simultaneously, the network unit and each item of viewing equipment being connected by a communication network, the immersive video comprising a series of sets of images, each set consisting of successive images, each image being composed of blocks of pixels, the immersive video being transmitted in encoded form according to a predetermined video compression standard to each item of viewing equipment, wherein the method is implemented by the network unit and comprises, for each set of images:

• obtaining information representing a point of view on the immersive video observed by each user;
• determining at least one image zone, referred to as the privileged zone, corresponding to at least some of the points of view, the determination comprising:
• determining, for each point of view, a spatial subpart of the immersive video corresponding to said point of view;
• defining a plurality of categories of blocks of pixels, a first category comprising blocks of pixels not appearing in any spatial subpart, and at least one second category comprising blocks of pixels appearing at least in a predefined number of spatial subparts;
• classifying each block of pixels of an image in the set of images in a category according to the number of times that this block of pixels appears in a spatial subpart;
• and
• forming at least one privileged zone from blocks of pixels classified in each second category. for each image included in the set of images, applying to the blocks of pixels not belonging to a privileged zone a compression rate on average higher than a mean of the compression rates applied to the blocks of pixels belonging to a privileged zone, and
• transmitting the set of images to each item of viewing equipment.