Non-reference quality estimation for temporal degradation of coded picture

Abstract

The non-reference method is widely useful for picture quality estimation on the decoder side. In other work, we discussed pure non-reference estimation using only the decoded picture, and we proposed quantitative estimation methods for mosquito noise and block artifacts. In this paper, we discuss the estimation method as it applies to the degradation of the temporal domain. In the proposed method, motion compensated inter-picture differences and motion vector activity are the basic parameters of temporal degradation. To obtain these parameters, accurate but unstable motion estimation is used with a 1/16 reduction of processing power. Similar values of the parameters in the pictures can be seen in the stable original picture, but temporal degradation caused by the coding increases them. For intra-coded pictures, the values increase significantly. However, for inter-coded pictures, the values are the same or decrease. Therefore, by taking the ratio of the peak frame and other frames, the absolute value of the temporal degradation can be estimated. In this case, the peak frame may be intra-coded. Finally, we evaluate the proposed method using coded pictures with different quantization. Copyright © 2011 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers.