Picture Quality Assessment Test for Digitally Coded Motion Pictures in Multi-Formats

We present a subjective quality assessment scheme for digitally coded motion pictures in multi-formats. Several scanning formats are available in digital broadcasting, and broadcasters can select an adequate delivery format according to the overall picture quality and transmission bit-rate. Thus, the overall quality of digitally coded pictures should be evaluated in terms of both coding degradation and image resolution. This assessment-test scheme enables a direct comparison of picture quality of different scanning formats based on the double stimulus impairment scale (DSIS) method recommended in Rec. ITU-R BT.500. We show results of assessment tests performed on 1080i, 720p, and 480p videos encoded in the MPEG-2 video standard and give some consideration to picture quality in digital broadcasting.