The Video Quality Experts Group: Evaluates Objective Methods of Video Image Quality Assessment

This paper briefly discusses objective and subjective methods for video quality assessment and then focuses on the current work plan and schedule of the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG). — Subjective assessment methods have been used reliably for many years to evaluate video image quality. They continue to provide the most reliable assessments. Some issues that arise with subjective assessment include the cost of conducting the evaluations and the fact that these methods cannot easily be used to monitor video image quality in real time. Traditional analog objective measurements, while still necessary, are not sufficient to measure the quality of digitally compressed video systems. Thus there is a need to develop new objective methods utilizing the characteristics of the human visual system. While several new objective methods have been developed, there is no internationally standardized method. — In October 1997, the VQEG was formed at a video quality experts meeting at Centro Studi e Laboratori Telecomunicazioni (CSELT) in Turin, Italy. The group is composed of experts from various backgrounds and affiliations, including participants from several internationally recognized laboratories working in the field of video quality assessment. The majority of the participants are active in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the VQEG combines the expertise and resources found in several Study Groups to work for a common goal. The first task undertaken by the VQEG is to provide a validation of objective video quality measurement methods leading to Recommendations in both the Telecommunications (ITU-T) and Radio (ITU-R) sectors of the ITU. To this end, VQEG has designed and is conducting a test program to compare subjective video quality evaluations with a number of proposed objective measurement techniques. The first test program will evaluate objective model performance against subjective results for video quality in the bit rate range of 768 kb/s to 50 Mb/s.

Published

1998-10

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00304

ISBN

978-1-61482-929-4