Edge dissimilarity reduced-reference quality metric with low overhead bitrate

In multimedia transmission, it is important to rely on an objective quality metric which accurately represents the subjective quality of processed images and video sequences. Reduced-reference metrics make use of side-information that is transmitted to the receiver for estimating the quality of the received sequence with low complexity. In this paper, an Edge-based Dissimilarity Reduced-Reference video quality metric with low overhead bitrate is proposed. The metric is evaluated by finding the dissimilarity between the edge information of original and distorted sequences. The edge degradation can be detected in this manner as perceived video quality is highly associated with edge structural. Due to the high overhead using the Soergel distance, it is pertinent to find a way to reduce the overhead while maintaining the edge information that can convey the quality measure of the sequences. The effects of different edge detection operator, video resolution and file compressor are investigated. The aim of this paper is to significantly reduce the bitrate required in order to transmit the side information overhead as the reduced reference video quality metric. From the results obtained, the side information extracted using Sobel edge detector maintained consistency throughout the reduction of spatial and temporal down-sample.