Comparison of Subjective Quality Test Methods for Omnidirectional Video Quality Evaluation

The test methods recommended by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for assessing 2D video quality are often used for evaluating omnidirectional / 360° videos. In this paper, we compare the performance of three different test methods, Absolute Category Rating (ACR), a modified version of ACR (M-ACR) with double presentation of the test stimulus, and DSIS (Double Stimulus Impairment Scale), based on the statistical reliability, assessment time and simulator sickness. Different settings were used for HEVC encoding of five 360° source videos of 10 s duration. Results indicate that DSIS is statistically more reliable with higher resolving power, followed by M-ACR and ACR. We found that simulator sickness increases with time, but can be reduced by taking breaks in-between the test sessions. The results for simulator sickness are compared across test methods and with similar tests conducted under different contextual conditions. We also recorded and analyzed the exploration behaviour of the users. Apart from the methodological findings, the test results provide insights into video quality for different resolution and encoding settings (“bitrate ladders”). These may be useful for choosing appropriate representations in the context of HTTP-based adaptive streaming in case of full-frame streaming.