Mario Vranješ

Objective video quality metrics

This paper discusses methods used in different objective video quality metrics. An experimental comparison of different objective methods is also conducted. This experiment shows the importance of video content for a subjective quality evaluation not comprised well by the objective metrics used.

Review of objective video quality metrics and performance comparison using different databases

The use of video-based applications has increased in recent years owing to the development of video technology as well as the widespread use of the Internet. Thus the evaluation of perceptual video quality has become very important and numerous video quality assessment (VQA) metrics have been developed over the past years. In this paper, we give a classification and a short review of objective VQA metrics, with a focus on the full reference metrics. With the aim of conducting a reliable test of the VQA metrics performances, we made two databases, each of them including 90 distorted video sequences. We carried out a subjective quality evaluation on these databases and the data were made available to the research community. Furthermore, we compared the performance of nine different, freely available, objective VQA metrics by using three different databases in different resolutions: LIVE Video Quality Database (768x432 resolution) and our two newly created databases for progressively scanned videos, i.e. ETFOS CIF Video Quality (ECVQ) database and ETFOS VGA Video Quality (EVVQ) database. Five different distortion types were used and the total number of 330 video sequences was evaluated. A comparison of metrics was done with respect to accuracy, monotonicity, stability, as well as complexity vs. accuracy criteria. The results show that the resolution, the content of the sequence and the distortion type have a significant influence on the performances of VQA metrics. Metrics that generally achieve a high correlation with subjective results for all databases and all distortion types are MOtion-based Video Integrity Evaluation (MOVIE) and Foveated Mean Squared Error (FMSE), but MOVIE has significantly higher complexity than FMSE. An exception is the distortion caused by IP transmission for which none of the analyzed metrics has shown satisfying accuracy and stability.

Foveated mean squared error--a novel video quality metric

Efficiency of a video coding process, as well as accuracy of an objective video quality evaluation can be significantly improved by introduction of the human visual system (HVS) characteristics. In this paper we analyze one of these characteristics; namely, visual acuity reduction due to the foveated vision and object movements in a video sequence. We propose a new video quality metric called Foveated Mean Squared Error (FMSE) that takes into account a variable resolution of the HVS across the visual field. The highest visual acuity is at the point of fixation that falls into fovea, an area at retina with the highest density of photoreceptors. Visual acuity decreases rapidly for image regions which are further with respect to the fixation point. FMSE also utilizes the effect of additional spatial acuity reduction due to motion in a video sequence. The quality measures calculated by FMSE have shown a high correlation with experimental results obtained by subjective video quality assessment.

Influence of temporal pooling method on the objective video quality evaluation

Objective video quality evaluation incorporates spatial and temporal degradation effects to calculate quality grade for each video frame alone, as well as the overall quality grade for the whole sequence. Distortion visibility depends not only on the level of degradation but also on video content and viewers preferences. Temporal pooling is a method that collapses series of frame quality scores to one quality score for whole video sequence and it should be aware of an influence of the video quality variation to the human overall judgments of quality. In this paper six pooling methods applied to five objective video quality metrics are compared. The best prediction capability has been obtained by those pooling methods that reflect two phenomena: a recency effect and the worst quality section influence. Moreover, the statistics of individual frames scores tends to be of high importance and strongly influences pooling method capabilities.

Subjective and objective quality evaluation of the H.264/AVC coded video

The H.264/AVC codec provides a superior coding efficiency and an improved network adaptation if compared to older video standards. In this paper we present experimental results obtained by the subjective and objective quality evaluation of the H.264/AVC coded video. Four objective metrics are used: peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), minimum of locally averaged PSNR (local_PSNR), video quality metric (VQM) and structural similarity index (SSIM). We have analyzed results of objective and subjective metrics for several CIF sequences and bit rates. Also, we have compared results obtained for H.264/AVC coded sequences with those coded with MPEG-4 Part 2 codec. Results of the subjective quality evaluation show that on the bit rates below 640 kb/s the H.264/AVC codec has achieved an obviously higher video quality, ensured by the objective metrics as well. On the bit rates higher than 640 kb/s the subjective quality of sequences coded by MPEG-4 Part 2 is close to the quality of H.264/AVC coded video, confirmed only by the SSIM and local_PSNR results.

Comparison of H.264/AVC and MPEG-4 part 2 coded video

brief overview of H.264/AVC and MPEG-4 Part 2 standards is given in this paper with focus on differences between them. Experimental quality comparison of H.264/AVC and MPEG-2 Part 2 coded video is done for several sequences and bit rates. The codecs used in the experiment are JVT JM ver. 10.2, as implementation of H.264/AVC, andXviD ver. 1.1.0, as implementation of MPEG-4 Part 2. The peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and video quality model (VQM) are used as objective quality metrics. The results obtained show that JVT JM codec outperforms XviD codec both in objective and subjective quality.

Method for Bandwidth Efficiency Increasing of M-ary PPM Transmitted-Reference UWB Communication Systems

One of the main drawbacks of conventional transmitted reference (TR) ultra-wideband systems is the fact that time delay between the reference and the data pulse has to be at least equal to channel delay spread, in order to avoid inter-pulse interference (IPI). This requirement drastically limits the achievable data rate of conventional TR systems based on M-ary pulse position modulation (PPM). In this paper, the new method for M-ary TR PPM scheme bandwidth efficiency increasing is proposed. In the proposed method the orthogonal codes are used such that only the pulses which can cause IPI are coded. Usage of such type of coding allows the reduction of time delay between the reference and the data pulse, whereas IPI is avoided. The proposed method achieves higher bandwidth efficiency than the conventional TR PPM method for the similar BEP performance level. Furthermore, the results show that an additional increase in bandwidth efficiency can be achieved by using higher modulation levels. Additionally, the analysis on tradeoffs between the BEP performance, bandwidth reduction and system costs is given in this paper.

Performance of Multi Pulse Position Amplitude Modulation for TH IR-UWB Communication Systems

The multi pulse position amplitude modulation scheme for time-hopping multiple access impulse radio ultrawideband communication systems has been presented in this paper. Multi pulse position amplitude modulation is a hybrid modulation technique, which combines multi pulse position modulation and pulse amplitude modulation. It is shown that multi pulse position amplitude modulation significantly outperforms pulse position modulation with respect to bandwidth efficiency. The multi pulse position amplitude modulation error probability over IEEE 802.15.3a multipath fading channels in multiuser environment is derived. The system analysis shows that the proper selection of modulation parameters can improve the system performance at the cost of hardware complexity (and vice versa).

Foveation-based content adaptive root mean squared error for video quality assessment

When the video is compressed and transmitted over heterogeneous networks, it is necessary to ensure the satisfying quality for the end user. Since human observers are the end users of video applications, it is very important that the human visual system (HVS) characteristics are taken into account during the video quality evaluation. This paper deals with video quality assessment (VQA) based on HVS characteristics and proposes a novel full-reference (FR) VQA metric called the Foveation-based content Adaptive Root Mean Squared Error (FARMSE). FARMSE uses several HVS characteristics that significantly influence perception of distortions in a video. Primarily these are foveated vision, reduction of the spatial acuity due to motions as well as spatial masking. Foveated vision is related to variable resolution of HVS across the viewing field, where the highest resolution is at the point of fixation. The point of fixation is projected onto the fovea – the area of retina with the highest density of photoreceptors. The part of image that falls on fovea is perceived by the highest acuity, whereas the spatial acuity decreases as the distance of the image part from the fovea increases. Spatial acuity further decreases if eyes cannot track moving objects. Both mentioned mechanisms influence contrast sensitivity of the HVS. Contrast sensitivity is frequency dependent and FARMSE uses Haar filters to utilize this dependence. Furthermore, spatial masking is implemented in each frequency channel. The FARMSE performance is compared to this of nine state-of-the-art VQA metrics on two different databases, LIVE and ECVQ. Additionally, the metrics are compared in terms of calculation complexity. The performed experiments show that FARMSE achieves high performance when predicting the quality of videos with different resolutions, degradation types and content types. FARMSE results outperform the results of most of the analyzed metrics, whereas they are comparable to these of the best publicly available metrics, including the well-known MOtion-based Video Integrity Evaluation (MOVIE) index. Besides that, FARMSE calculation complexity is significantly lower than that of the metrics comparable thereto in terms of prediction accuracy.

Enhanced predictive modelling process of broadband services adoption based on time series data

Abstract In this paper, the importance of the predictive modelling process of broadband services adoption is described. A detailed overview of different analytical models used for prediction, i.e., fitting and forecasting processes of broadband services adoption are presented. Furthermore, a comparison of several analytical models commonly used for prediction of broadband adoption is conducted. In order to more accurately fit to the existing broadband adoption time series data, and to forecast the future broadband services adoption paths, the features of the most accurate common predictive models have been identified for different phases of broadband services adoption. Considering the given results, usage of additional models in the predictive modelling process is analyzed. The objective of these analyses is set to improve the accuracy of the existing predictive modelling process. The accuracy of the predictive modelling process using additional models is tested and compared in different phases of broadband adoption. The model which gives the most accurate results is identified. Finally, in order to enable the usage of this model within a whole broadband service life cycle, as well as to include a greater number of explanatory parameters in predictive modelling process, an enhanced predictive modelling process is proposed.