Comparison of JPEG 2000 and H.264/AVC by subjective assessment in the Digital Cinema

Two video coding schemes with variable bit rates-JPEG 2000 and H.264/AVC-were compared in terms of perceived quality performance in a Digital Cinema environment. In this paper we describe in detail the procedure for a subjective quality assessment. The stimuli used were 10 seconds long color sequences at HD resolution (1920×1080 progressive), 30 fps, and YCbCr 4:2:0. We do not consider DCI-specified content, but rather exploring the quality of rates suitable for alternative content. The results show that temporal compression schemes like H.264/AVC can play out their high coding efficiency not only at SD resolutions, but also at high resolutions and at high bit rates around 31 Mbps.