VQM (DCT-based Video Quality Metric)

General info

Metric type: full-reference image metric
Value range: (images are same) 0..∞ (bad quality)
Value interpretation: smaller is better quality
MSU VQMT implementations: CPU multithreaded
MSU VQMT visualization: pixel-wise
Available colorspaces: Y
Output values: metric value
Aggregated values: standard set
MSU VQMT usages: -metr vqm
External links: original paper (Feng Xiao)

Algorithm description

This metric uses discrete cosine transform (DCT) to predict human rank. It is different from widely spreaded VQM metric by ITU, that currently not implemented in VQMT. Following calculations are processed to get value of metric:

Color transform. YUV color space is used for metric calculation.
DCT transform of blocks 8x8. It is used to separate images into different frequencies.
Conversion from DCT coefficients to local contrast (LC) using following equation:

$LC_{i,j}=\frac{DCT_{i,j}\cdot DC}{2^{20}}$

where DC is the DCT coefficient with indexes (0, 0).

Conversion from LC to just-noticeable difference:

$JND_{i,j}=LC_{i,j}\cdot CSF_{i,j}$

where CSF is Contrast Sensitivity Function. Inverse MPEG-4 default quantization matrix is used as CSF in original article.

Weighted pooling of mean and maximum distortions. First, absolute difference “D” is calculated for JND coefficients following by VQM value construction:

$\mbox{VQM}=\mbox{mean}(|D|)+0.005\cdot\mbox{max}(|D|)$

Please, refer the original paper for the details.

Benchmark

Choose benchmark:

Implementation	System & settings	Colors	Resolution	FPS	Sec. per frame
VQMT 14.0 default	multithreaded	Y	HD 720p	112.46	0.01
VQMT 14.0 default	multithreaded	Y	FullHD 1080p	52.07	0.02
VQMT 14.0 default	multithreaded	Y	4K 2160p	14.73	0.076
VQMT 14.0 default	singlethreaded	Y	HD 720p	25.64	0.041
VQMT 14.0 default	singlethreaded	Y	FullHD 1080p	12.57	0.084
VQMT 14.0 default	singlethreaded	Y	4K 2160p	3.24	0.329

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 default	multithreaded	Y	HD 720p	112.93	0.01
VQMT 13.1 default	multithreaded	Y	FullHD 1080p	52.13	0.02
VQMT 13.1 default	multithreaded	Y	4K 2160p	14.53	0.076
VQMT 13.1 default	singlethreaded	Y	HD 720p	25.62	0.04
VQMT 13.1 default	singlethreaded	Y	FullHD 1080p	12.57	0.082
VQMT 13.1 default	singlethreaded	Y	4K 2160p	3.23	0.326

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 default	multithreaded	Y	HD 720p	818.62	0.002
VQMT 14.0 default	multithreaded	Y	FullHD 1080p	380.52	0.005
VQMT 14.0 default	multithreaded	Y	4K 2160p	49.1	0.035
VQMT 14.0 default	singlethreaded	Y	HD 720p	22.57	0.045
VQMT 14.0 default	singlethreaded	Y	FullHD 1080p	11.95	0.085
VQMT 14.0 default	singlethreaded	Y	4K 2160p	3.51	0.291

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

Example

cion

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Original

LQ H264, VQM-y=1.87

MSU VQMT visualization

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Blurring, VQM-y=2.28

MSU VQMT visualization

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Random points, VQM-y=0.5107

MSU VQMT visualization

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Luminance shift, VQM-y=0.4317

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=2, VQM-y=3.55

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=5, VQM-y=2.45

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=10, VQM-y=1.61

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=15, VQM-y=1.32

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=20, VQM-y=1.16

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=40, VQM-y=0.8210

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=80, VQM-y=0.5216

MSU VQMT visualization

singapore

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LQ H264, VQM-y=3.05

MSU VQMT visualization

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Blurring, VQM-y=4.22

MSU VQMT visualization

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Random points, VQM-y=2.38

MSU VQMT visualization

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Luminance shift, VQM-y=1.02

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=2, VQM-y=4.35

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=5, VQM-y=4.18

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=10, VQM-y=2.95

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=15, VQM-y=2.96

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=20, VQM-y=2.62

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=40, VQM-y=2.59

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=80, VQM-y=2.28

MSU VQMT visualization

kayak

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LQ H264, VQM-y=8.67

MSU VQMT visualization

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Blurring, VQM-y=4.60

MSU VQMT visualization

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Random points, VQM-y=1.05

MSU VQMT visualization

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Luminance shift, VQM-y=0.9255

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=2, VQM-y=6.12

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=5, VQM-y=4.82

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=10, VQM-y=3.62

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=15, VQM-y=3.05

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=20, VQM-y=2.82

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=40, VQM-y=2.00

MSU VQMT visualization

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JPEG Q=80, VQM-y=1.29

MSU VQMT visualization

Legacy notes

In VQMT 12 we removed input aligning, also metric is optimized.