Perceived quality metrics for low bit rate compressed video

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.