Method and device for estimating video quality on bitstream level

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9549183-B2
Application number	US-201114116342-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 12, 2011
Priority date	May 12, 2011
Publication date	Jan 17, 2017
Grant date	Jan 17, 2017

Abstract

A method for estimating video quality on bit-stream level, wherein the video quality refers to a video after error concealment and the method is performed on bit-stream level before said error concealment, comprises extracting and/or calculating a plurality of global condition features from a video bit-stream, extracting and/or calculating a plurality of local effectiveness features at least for a lost MB, calculating a numeric error concealment effectiveness level for each (or at least for each lost) MB by emulating an error concealment method that is used in said error concealment, and providing the calculated error concealment effectiveness level as an estimated visible artifacts level of video quality.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method for estimating video quality on a bit-stream level, the video quality being an estimated quality of a decoded video after error concealment and the method being performed by a computer on the bit-stream level before said error concealment, the method comprising:
at least one of extracting and calculating a plurality of global condition features from a video bit-stream, wherein the global condition features comprise at least two of a frame type, a ratio of intra-macroblocks versus inter-macroblocks, a motion index and a texture index, wherein the motion index is an average length of received motion vectors of a frame, and wherein the texture index is obtained from texture smoothness values of interested macroblocks of the frame;
determining that a macroblock is lost;
at least one of extracting and calculating a plurality of local effectiveness features for the lost macroblock, wherein the local effectiveness features comprise at least two of a spatial motion vector homogeneity, a temporal motion vector uniformity, and a macroblock texture smoothness;
calculating a numeric error concealment level for the lost macroblock based on the plurality of global condition features and the plurality of local effectiveness features by emulating an error concealment method that is used in said error concealment; and
providing the calculated error concealment level as an indication of said video quality.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the plurality of global condition features comprise at least the frame type, the ratio of intra-macroblock versus inter-macroblock, the motion index and the texture index.

3. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the interested macroblocks comprise the lost macroblocks and macroblocks adjacent to the lost macroblocks and wherein the macroblock texture smoothness is obtained from a comparison of the ratio of DC coefficient energy to the accumulated energy of DC and AC coefficients with a threshold value according to:

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Assignees

• Liao Ning
• Gu Xiao Dong
• Chen Zhibo
• Xie Kai
• Thomson Licensing

Inventors

• Liao Ning
• Gu Xiao Dong
• Chen Zhibo
• Xie Kai

Classifications

• H04N19/895 Primary

  in combination with error concealment · CPC title

• H04N19/513 Primary

  Processing of motion vectors · CPC title

• H04N19/107

  between spatial and temporal predictive coding, e.g. picture refresh · CPC title

• H04N19/154 Primary

  Measured or subjectively estimated visual quality after decoding, e.g. measurement of distortion (use of rate-distortion criteria H04N19/147) · CPC title

• H04N19/00939 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic