Tag Archive for: Subjective Testing

Hadi
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Paper accepted – On The Impact of Viewing Distance on Perceived Video Quality

Title: On The Impact of Viewing Distance on Perceived Video Quality

Link: IEEE Visual Communications and Image Processing (VCIP 2021) 5-8 December 2021, Munich, Germany

Authors: Hadi Amirpour (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt), Raimund Schatz (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria), Mohammad Ghanbari (School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, UK), and Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt)

Abstract: Due to the growing importance of optimizing quality and efficiency of video streaming delivery, accurate assessment of user perceived video quality becomes increasingly relevant. However, due to the wide range of viewing distances encountered in real-world viewing settings, actually perceived video quality can vary significantly in everyday viewing situations. In this paper, we investigate and quantify the influence of viewing distance on perceived video quality.  A subjective experiment was conducted with full HD sequences at three different stationary viewing distances, with each video sequence being encoded at three different quality levels. Our study results confirm that the viewing distance has a significant influence on the quality assessment. In particular, they show that an increased viewing distance generally leads to an increased perceived video quality, especially at low media encoding quality levels. In this context, we also provide an estimation of potential bitrate savings that knowledge of actual viewing distance would enable in practice.
Since current objective video quality metrics do not systematically take into account viewing distance, we also analyze and quantify the influence of viewing distance on the correlation between objective and subjective metrics. Our results confirm the need for distance-aware objective metrics when accurate prediction of perceived video quality in real-world environments is required.

Christian Timmerer
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QoMEX’19 paper on “Tile-based Streaming of 8K Omnidirectional Video: Subjective and Objective QoE Evaluation” accepted

Authors: Raimund Schatz (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology), Anatoliy Zabrovskiy (Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt), Christian Timmerer(Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Bitmovin Inc.)
Abstract: Omnidirectional video (ODV) streaming applications are becoming increasingly popular. They enable a highly immersive experience as the user can freely choose her/his field of view within the 360-degree environment. Current deployments are fairly simple but viewport-agnostic which inevitably results in high storage/bandwidth requirements and low Quality of Experience (QoE). A promising solution is referred to as tile- based streaming which allows to have higher quality within the user’s viewport while quality outside the user’s viewport could be lower. However, empirical QoE assessment studies in this domain are still rare. Thus, this paper investigates the impact of different tile-based streaming approaches and configurations on the QoE of ODV. We present the results of a lab-based subjective evaluation in which participants evaluated 8K omnidirectional video QoE as influenced by different (i) tile-based streaming approaches (full vs. partial delivery), (ii) content types (static vs. moving camera), and (iii) tile encoding quality levels determined by different quantization parameters. Our experimental setup is characterized by high reproducibility since relevant media delivery aspects (including the user’s head movements and dynamic tile quality adaptation) are already rendered into the respective processed video sequences. Additionally, we performed a complementary objective evaluation of the different test sequences focusing on bandwidth efficiency and objective quality metrics. The results are presented in this paper and discussed in detail which confirm that tile-based streaming of ODV improves visual quality while reducing bandwidth requirements.

Index Terms: Omnidirectional Video, Tile-based Streaming, Subjective Testing, Objective Metrics, Quality of Experience

Acknowledgment: This work was supported in part by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) under the Next Generation Video Streaming project “PROMETHEUS”.

Link: https://www.qomex2019.de/