Abstract
A method for measuring the blocking artifact in video frames is presented, which is capable of detecting this artifact even outside a regular geometric structure, that is, on moving objects in frames encoded with prediction-based techniques. Information-theoretic measures are integrated with models of the human perception, to account for the visibility of the artifact on different image content. A final metric is produced that yields coherent values on variously degraded versions derived from different originals. No information is required on the encoding procedure that originated the artifact; this makes this method suitable to operate on the decoded version of the frames, at the final stage of the video processing chain. Experiments show that the metric has a good correlation with subjective scores and possesses some additional desirable properties.
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Abbreviations
- \(r_i^k(j)\) :
-
First local metric (local steepness increment) of vertical blockiness at row \(i\), on column \(j\), with horizontal distance \(k\) between the differenced pixels
- \(dR\varphi _i^k(j)\) :
-
Second local metric (local border angle) of vertical blockiness at row \(i\), on column \(j\), with horizontal distance \(k\) between the differenced pixels
- \(Ir_v(i,j)\), \(IdR\varphi _v(i,j)\) :
-
Maps of the two vertical metrics of detected blockiness as a function of coordinate pair \((i,j)\)
- \(IB_v(i,j)\), \(IB_h(i,j)\) :
-
Final maps of vertical and horizontal blockiness
- \(w_l(i,j)\) :
-
Luminance masking weight in \((i,j)\)
- \(h_{i,j}\) :
-
Measure of local entropy of the region centered in \((i,j)\)
- \(w_t(i,j)\) :
-
Texture masking weight in \((i,j)\)
- \(W_{lt}(i,j)\) :
-
Map of content masking weights as a function of \((i,j)\)
- \(IB(i,j)\) :
-
Final map of local blockiness (corrected by content weights)
- \(B_{\mathrm{av}}\) :
-
Average strength of the block borders of the image
- \(H_{PB}\) :
-
Metric of blockiness distribution. Average of the local entropy of normalized local blockiness
- DBM:
-
Detected Blockiness Metric. Final proposed metric of the image blockiness
- GBIM:
-
Generalized Blockiness Impairment Metric [26]. First existing metric used for comparison
- NPBM:
-
No Reference Perceptual Blockiness metric [13]. Second existing metric used for comparison
- QA:
-
Quality Assessment
- FR:
-
Full reference
- NR:
-
No Reference
- JND:
-
Just Noticeable Difference
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Abate, L., Ramponi, G. & Stessen, J. Detection and measurement of the blocking artifact in decoded video frames. SIViP 7, 453–466 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-013-0448-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-013-0448-z