Audiovisual quality assessment in communications applications: Current status, trends and challenges

Audiovisual quality assessment is one of the major challenges in multimedia communications. Traditionally, algorithm-based (objective) assessment methods have focused primarily on the compression artifacts. However, compression is only one of the numerous factors influencing the perception. In communications applications, transmission errors, including packet losses and bit errors, can be a significant source of quality degradation. Also the environmental factors, such as background noise, ambient light and display characteristics, pose an impact on perception. A third aspect that has not been widely addressed in practical quality metrics is the co-impact of audio and video qualities. This paper provides an overview of the current trends and challenges in objective audiovisual quality assessment, with emphasis on communications applications.