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SwissQual VQuad-HD Selected as New ITU HD Video Testing Standard J.341
Solothurn, Switzerland, 28.1.2011
SwissQual AG today announced that VQuad-HD, a new video quality testing technique for HD video content, has been selected to become the new ITU-T video quality standard J.341, to be used to confirm the quality of HD video streams and channels.
VQuad-HD was confirmed and approved as the new ITU-T HD video testing standard, J.341, for full reference perceptual video quality measurement on 14 January 2011. J.341 is intended for use in high-definition video, teleconferencing and broadcasting applications.
VQuad-HD was selected as the winning algorithm in a competition carried out by the Video Quality Expert Group (VQEG) in 2010, and has now been adopted as the sole standard by ITU-T. In the detailed evaluation conducted by the VQEG, VQuad-HD showed the best performance compared to other competing models for degradations such as coding or transmission only distortions. In addition VQuad-HD significantly outperformed a computationally intensive enhanced version of a Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) based model.
The new VQuad-HD algorithm, which is protected by a number of copyrights and patents, was developed exclusively by leading industry experts at SwissQual AG, and the results of this process mean that SwissQual, a Swiss technology company that focuses on mobile network quality of service, is the only company that has been selected to provide algorithms for both next generation HD video and HD voice ITU standards.
Selection and approval by the ITU-T means that J.341/VQuad-HD is now the only full-reference video quality testing approach that has official ITU-T approval, making it the recognized HD video testing standard of the international community.
"J.341/VQuad-HD was the clear winner in the comparative testing carried out by the independent VQEG expert group by a significant margin, and we are delighted to have received full ITU-T approval and standardization" said Pero Juric, VP at SwissQual. "SwissQual experts expend considerable effort to develop the most accurate and robust algorithms possible to support the quality testing industry, to ensure that the results of tests match actual user experience, and J.341/VQuad-HD is another example of that commitment."
J.341/VQuad-HD predicts video quality as if it had been perceived by real people. It uses psycho-visual and cognitive-inspired modeling to emulate subjective perception. A very large number of subjectively-scored video samples were used to evaluate and enhance the J.341/VQuad-HD algorithm, and the data contained a wide range of distortions, as defined by the testing regime of the VQEG competition.
"The technology behind J.341/VQuad-HD is quite complex, depending on some very detailed psychometric and cognitive modeling techniques that are unique to SwissQual," explains Jens Berger, Head of Applied Research at SwissQual. "For example, we perform a special temporal analysis of the distribution of spatial degradations that puts increased emphasis on the tail of the degradation distribution. This means we can model more accurately what real users really experience, and ensure closer match between what we predict and what real human actually see. Besides an overall quality, underlying results allow a good analysis of the cause of degradations i.e. compression or transmission artifacts"
J.381/VQuad-HD allows the video industry to approach the broad distribution of HD video for exciting new application with confidence that testing results will accurately match what actual viewers experience on screen. J.341/VQuad-HD will also offer immediate, strong support for testing of new wideband 4G/LTE networks delivering HD-quality video services.
More information on VQUAD-HD can be found in the technical white paper "Video Quality Measurement for High Definition Video Signals" available for download from http://www.vquad-hd.info/index.php/pages/downloads.html
