Digital Broadcasting. A Study on Criticality for MPEG-2 Video Coding.

Since picture quality in digital coding depends heavily on such picture characteristics as spatial detail and motion, statistical analysis is required to estimate picture quality in digital broadcasting systems. This paper proposes a new definition of “criticality”, a quantitative measure of difficulty for MPEG-2 video coding, to analyze the picture quality of television programs statistically. Equipment is developed to measure criticality and the relationship between criticality values and assessment test scores is examined for test sequences. The results show that the definition of criticality provides sufficient accuracy to estimate picture quality for a large number of pictures statistically.