Evaluation of video quality based on objectively estimated metric

Multimedia applications and especially encoded video services, are expected to play a major role in the 3rd generation (3G) and beyond mobile communication systems. Given that future service providers are expected to provide video applications at various price and quality levels, quick and economically affordable methods for preparing/encoding the offering media at various qualities are necessary to be developed. This paper presents a method for objective evaluation of the perceived quality of MPEG-4 video content, based on a quantification of subjective assessments. Showing that subjectively derived perceived quality of service (PQoS) vs. bit rate curves can be successfully approximated by a group of exponential functions, the proposed method exploits a simple objective metric, which is obtained from the mean frame rate vs. bit rate curves of an encoded clip. The validity of this metric is assessed by comparing subjectively derived PQoS results to the corresponding ones, which come from the proposed objective method, showing that the proposed technique provides satisfactory PQoS estimation.