Open Collections

UBC Theses and Dissertations

UBC Theses Logo
Featured Collection

UBC Theses and Dissertations

Packet loss effects on the quality of MPEG-2 video transported over IP networks Chiu, Daniel

Abstract

In this thesis, we examine the effects of packet loss on the quality of the MPEG-2 video transported over an IP network. We performed experiments in a video-ondemand testbed network using three constant bit rate MPEG-2 video elementary streams of differing activity levels. We assessed the video quality using the objective peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) metric and the subjective mean opinion score (MOS) metric. Our results confirmed that the objective PSNR video quality metric is poorly correlated with subjective quality assessments. We found that the activity level of the video influences the subjective MOS video quality assessments but not the objective PSNR quality measurements. The difference in the perceived video quality between the activity streams was found to be attributed to characteristics in the human visual system. In particular, a high temporal frequency decreases the sensitivity of the visual system. We found that slice loss is linearly correlated with packet loss while picture header loss is poorly correlated with packet loss. We also found that slice loss is the dominant factor contributing to the degradation in video quality rather than picture header loss. We found that low packet loss rates translate into much higher frame error rates due to propagation of errors. Finally, we investigated the effectiveness of forward error correction (FEC) using Reed-Solomon coding on the video quality. We found that FEC can increase a stream's packet loss rate tolerance significantly with a small increase in overhead.

Item Metadata

Title
Packet loss effects on the quality of MPEG-2 video transported over IP networks
Creator
Chiu, Daniel
Publisher
University of British Columbia
Date Issued
2000
Description
In this thesis, we examine the effects of packet loss on the quality of the MPEG-2 video transported over an IP network. We performed experiments in a video-ondemand testbed network using three constant bit rate MPEG-2 video elementary streams of differing activity levels. We assessed the video quality using the objective peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) metric and the subjective mean opinion score (MOS) metric. Our results confirmed that the objective PSNR video quality metric is poorly correlated with subjective quality assessments. We found that the activity level of the video influences the subjective MOS video quality assessments but not the objective PSNR quality measurements. The difference in the perceived video quality between the activity streams was found to be attributed to characteristics in the human visual system. In particular, a high temporal frequency decreases the sensitivity of the visual system. We found that slice loss is linearly correlated with packet loss while picture header loss is poorly correlated with packet loss. We also found that slice loss is the dominant factor contributing to the degradation in video quality rather than picture header loss. We found that low packet loss rates translate into much higher frame error rates due to propagation of errors. Finally, we investigated the effectiveness of forward error correction (FEC) using Reed-Solomon coding on the video quality. We found that FEC can increase a stream's packet loss rate tolerance significantly with a small increase in overhead.
Extent
3697271 bytes
Genre
Thesis/Dissertation
Type
Text
File Format
application/pdf
Language
eng
Date Available
2009-07-06
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
DOI
10.14288/1.0051690
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/10250
Degree
Master of Science - MSc
Program
Computer Science
Affiliation
Science, Faculty of; Computer Science, Department of
Degree Grantor
University of British Columbia
Graduation Date
2000-05
Campus
UBCV
Scholarly Level
Graduate
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

Item Media

Loading media...

Item Citations and Data

Permanent URL (DOI):
Rights

For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.