lesser metric values - better quality (naturalness)
normal metric values are in range about 3..20. Also, there can be values NAN and 0, which are abnormal and should be considered as symptom of not natural image
NIQE performs feature extraction for every 96x96 block of image on 2 scales. Than it computes correlations of features between all blocks and applies leaned model. For more details, please refer to original paper. Since version 13 VQMT can build a block-wise visualization showing contribution of each block to the final result.
This metric has a special aggregated value NIQE mean, it takes a weighted mean filtering abnormal metric values and taking suspicies values with low weight. You can turn this mode using metric settings. Also, please see our paper.
This metric only applicable to filmed scenes. Metric can produce inadequate result if some graphics is on it (including credits, subtitles, etc.). Please, run NIQE excluding all rendered scenes, they can fatally spoil average value. Also, this metric can produce bad result on scenes containing noisy objects, like sand or grass, however on scenes with big constant areas, like monotonic sky. In common case normal metric results lies in the interval 3..20.
Sometimes, metric shows better result for the compressed image and this correlates with human perception. Compressed image not always is perceived as worse. It can occur for example in case of noisy images (if the noise has non-compression nature). This is only metric in VQMT now that can detect increasing of subjective quality in comparison to original.
Sometimes, codec can allow geometry transformation (like shift of heterogeneous objects in frame), that not critical for subjective perception. Objective-reference metrics are very perceptive to such transformation, and in this cases no-reference metric can show result closer to subjective score.
Benchmark
Choose benchmark:
Implementation
System & settings
Colors
Resolution
FPS
Sec. per frame
VQMT 14.0 OpenCL
OpenCL
Y
HD 720p
89.39
0.014
VQMT 14.0 OpenCL
OpenCL
Y
FullHD 1080p
41.94
0.027
VQMT 14.0 OpenCL
OpenCL
Y
4K 2160p
10.61
0.107
VQMT 14.0 default
multithreaded
Y
HD 720p
47.76
0.023
VQMT 14.0 default
multithreaded
Y
FullHD 1080p
21.35
0.051
VQMT 14.0 default
multithreaded
Y
4K 2160p
4.83
0.243
VQMT 14.0 default
singlethreaded
Y
HD 720p
12.42
0.084
VQMT 14.0 default
singlethreaded
Y
FullHD 1080p
5.56
0.189
VQMT 14.0 default
singlethreaded
Y
4K 2160p
1.38
0.769
Measurements were done on VQMT 14.0 BETA r12792 PRO for Windows.
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 8 cores
GPU: NVIDIA CUDA/GeForce GTX 660 Ti
Values can vary depending on system configuration, input format and other factors
Implementation
System & settings
Colors
Resolution
FPS
Sec. per frame
VQMT 13.1 OpenCL
OpenCL
Y
HD 720p
88.87
0.014
VQMT 13.1 OpenCL
OpenCL
Y
FullHD 1080p
42.24
0.027
VQMT 13.1 OpenCL
OpenCL
Y
4K 2160p
10.68
0.104
VQMT 13.1 default
multithreaded
Y
HD 720p
47.71
0.022
VQMT 13.1 default
multithreaded
Y
FullHD 1080p
21.1
0.051
VQMT 13.1 default
multithreaded
Y
4K 2160p
4.8
0.241
VQMT 13.1 default
singlethreaded
Y
HD 720p
12.46
0.083
VQMT 13.1 default
singlethreaded
Y
FullHD 1080p
5.55
0.186
VQMT 13.1 default
singlethreaded
Y
4K 2160p
1.37
0.762
Measurements were done on VQMT 13.1 r12792 PRO for Windows.
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 8 cores
GPU: NVIDIA CUDA/GeForce GTX 660 Ti
Values can vary depending on system configuration, input format and other factors
Implementation
System & settings
Colors
Resolution
FPS
Sec. per frame
VQMT 14.0 OpenCL
OpenCL
Y
HD 720p
4.29
0.293
VQMT 14.0 OpenCL
OpenCL
Y
FullHD 1080p
4.24
0.3
VQMT 14.0 OpenCL
OpenCL
Y
4K 2160p
4.22
0.325
VQMT 14.0 default
multithreaded
Y
HD 720p
136.31
0.009
VQMT 14.0 default
multithreaded
Y
FullHD 1080p
38.66
0.034
VQMT 14.0 default
multithreaded
Y
4K 2160p
5.21
0.279
VQMT 14.0 default
singlethreaded
Y
HD 720p
14.17
0.071
VQMT 14.0 default
singlethreaded
Y
FullHD 1080p
7.67
0.131
VQMT 14.0 default
singlethreaded
Y
4K 2160p
2.19
0.467
Measurements were done on VQMT 14.0 BETA r12792 PRO for Linux.
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Silver 4216 CPU @ 2.10GHz, 64 cores
GPU: NVIDIA CUDA/TITAN RTX
Values can vary depending on system configuration, input format and other factors
Original, NIQE-y=3.62
LQ H264, NIQE-y=5.09
MSU VQMT visualization
Blurring, NIQE-y=9.46
MSU VQMT visualization
Random points, NIQE-y=3.86
MSU VQMT visualization
Luminance shift, NIQE-y=3.62
MSU VQMT visualization
JPEG Q=2, NIQE-y=20.39
MSU VQMT visualization
JPEG Q=5, NIQE-y=11.91
MSU VQMT visualization
JPEG Q=10, NIQE-y=8.29
MSU VQMT visualization
JPEG Q=15, NIQE-y=6.89
MSU VQMT visualization
JPEG Q=20, NIQE-y=6.34
MSU VQMT visualization
JPEG Q=40, NIQE-y=4.57
MSU VQMT visualization
