Abstract-Video streaming via TCP networks has become a popular and highly demanded service, but its quality assessment in both objective and subjective terms has not been properly addressed. In this paper, based on statistical analysis a full analytic model of a no-reference objective metric, namely Pause Intensity, for video quality assessment is presented. The model characterizes the video playout buffer behavior in connection with the network performance (throughput) and the video playout rate. This allows for instant quality measurement and control without requiring a reference video. Pause intensity specifically addresses the need for assessing the quality issue in terms of the continuity in the playout of TCP streaming videos, which cannot be properly measured by other objective metrics such as PSNR, SSIM and buffer underrun or pause frequency. The performance of the analytical model is rigidly verified by simulation results and subjective tests using a range of video clips. It is demonstrated that pause intensity is closely correlated with viewers' opinion scores regardless of the vastly different composition of individual elements, such as pause duration and pause frequency which jointly constitute this new quality metric. It is also shown that the correlation performance of pause intensity is consistent and content independent.
This work looks into video quality assessment applied to the field of telecare and proposes an alternative metric to the more traditionally used PSNR based on the requirements of such an application. We show that the Pause Intensity metric introduced in [1] is also relevant and applicable to heterogeneous networks with a wireless last hop connected to a wired TCP backbone. We demonstrate through our emulation testbed that the impairments experienced in such a network architecture are dominated by continuity based impairments rather than artifacts, such as motion drift or blockiness. We also look into the implication of using Pause Intensity as a metric in terms of the overall video latency, which is potentially problematic should the video be sent and acted upon in real-time. We conclude that Pause Intensity may be used alongside the video characteristics which have been suggested as a measure of the overall video quality.
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