1. A method comprising: receiving a source 3D video stream; receiving or generating disparity information associated with the source 3D video stream; receiving a distorted version of the same source 3D video stream; generating disparity information associated with the distorted 3D video stream by employing a stereo matching algorithm to derive a disparity between a left view and a right view of the source 3D video stream; comparing the disparity information associated with the source 3D video stream with the disparity information associated with the distorted 3D video stream; and altering an encoding process based on the results of comparing the disparity information associated with the source 3D video stream with the disparity information associated with the reconstructed and distorted 3D video stream.