This paper presents an objective metric for the perceived quality of low bit rate compressed video. Frames are decomposed into several frequency bands at multiple scales and a motion detection algorithm is used to segment moving and nonmoving regions. The distance between the decompositions of the reference and distorted video sequences is used to estimate a frame distortion. The pooled error across several frames and the correlation between successive estimates of perceived quality are used to estimate the current perceived quality at a rate of 2 samples per second. The results of a subjective evaluation of perceived quality are used to determine the model parameters. The variety of content and coding conditions used in the subjective evaluation permits a wide range of training conditions. The results indicate that the metric can capture many of the features of the measured perceived quality over time.
Mark Masry, Sheila S. Hemami