Video quality assessment for computer graphics applications

Abstract

Numerous current Computer Graphics methods produce video sequences as their outcome. The merit of these methods is often judged by assessing the quality of a set of results through lengthy user studies. We present a full-reference video quality metric geared specifically towards the requirements of Computer Graphics applications as a faster computational alternative to subjective evaluation. Our metric can compare a video pair with arbitrary dynamic ranges, and comprises a human visual system model for a wide range of luminance levels, that predicts distortion visibility through models of luminance adaptation, spatiotemporal contrast sensitivity and visual masking. We present applications of the proposed metric to quality prediction of HDR video compression and temporal tone mapping, comparison of different rendering approaches and qualities, and assessing the impact of variable frame rate to perceived quality.