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Video Quality Research

The video quality project helps public and private sectors optimize networked video transmissions and provide the best video quality possible. To deliver high-quality video to users, whether commercially or in public safety and surveillance uses, video streaming applications need to dynamically balance available streaming bandwidth with video resolution, providing the best quality video possible without requiring excess time for video buffering.

Develop Video Quality Metrics

ITS is renowned for developing objective metrics that predict human perception of video quality. From 1989 to 2011, ITS developed reduced reference (RR) metrics that compare a pristine original video with an impaired version of that video.  

Around 2015, ITS began developing no reference (NR) metrics. Although it has long been possible to statistically compare the quality of a video to another reference video, it remains challenging to measure the quality of a single video with no reference. Hence, the term NR metric is used to describe the type of model we are currently seeking to develop.

The ITS metrics and development tools are freely available free of charge for any commercial or non-commercial use. See the GitHub repository license for details. 

Improving Video Quality for First Responders

ITS has a long history of helping first responders understand how their video quality needs differ from typical consumers. ITS analyzed first responder problems, simulated first responder videos, created datasets for public safety use cases, developed new subjective test methods, and created a tool that helps first responders define video system requirements. 

Improve Subjective Test Methods

Rapid advances in video technology require new analysis methods. ITS investigates improved methods for designing and performing subjective tests. We also develop new statistical analysis methods to analyze subjective test data and objective metric data. 

Video quality assessment research typically uses silent videos, to eliminate variables. However, the human visual system pulls information from senses of hearing and touch. ITS conducts research on audiovisual quality to understand issues that traditional video-only research misses. 

Share Data & Information 

ITS is committed to openly collaborating with national and international colleagues to solve complex video quality assessment problems. The most impactful open issues cannot be resolved by any single organization in isolation. Our publications demonstrate a long history of openly collaborating with diverse organizations and publishing our findings, to inform US industry. 

ITS sponsors the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG) through leadership, website support, and email reflectors. VQEG facilitates communication among academia, industry, and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). VQEG provides a venue to share cutting-edge research, understand the video quality problems of diverse video systems, develop new video quality assessment methods, and validate video metrics prior to standardization.

To facilitate and foster collaborative research and development in the area of consumer video processing and quality measurement, ITS hosts the Consumer Digital Video Library (CDVL). Where licensing terms permit, ITS subjective video quality datasets and studio quality video sequences are openly shared on CDVL.

Support International Standards

ITS supports international standardization efforts of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) on topics related to video quality. ITS contributes to VQEG collaborations that lay the groundwork for new and improved ITU Recommendations. ITS has supported nine efforts to independently validate objective metrics prior to standardization between 1994 and 2025.