Dual detail video encoding with region specific quality control

Abstract

Described herein are, among other things, techniques for implementing a dual detail encoding scheme in a distributed display system. At the host computer, an application may render a frame for a scene at a first resolution. The host computer may generate a two-dimensional (2D) array of pixels for the frame, encode the 2D array of pixels, and transmit the encoded pixel data to the display device. The 2D array of pixels comprises, for each eye, a copy of the frame downscaled to a second resolution less than the first resolution, and a copy of a high-attention subregion of the scene. The 2D array of pixels may be encoded using a technique that controls a quality parameter at compression unit granularity, such as macroblock or coding tree unit granularity. At the display device, the encoded pixel data is decoded to obtain the 2D array of pixels for the frame.