Model and Performance of a No-Reference Quality Assessment Metric for Video Streaming

TL;DR

This paper introduces a no-reference video quality metric called Pause Intensity, which assesses streaming quality based on buffer behavior and network performance, enabling instant quality control without reference videos.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel analytic model for Pause Intensity, a no-reference metric that correlates well with viewer opinions and addresses limitations of existing metrics.

Findings

Pause Intensity correlates strongly with viewer scores.

The model is validated through simulations and subjective tests.

Pause Intensity is content independent and reliable.

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 viewer 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.