Institute for Telecommunication Sciences / Research / Quality of Experience / Video Quality Research / Standards / Overview

Video Quality Assessment Standards

ITS Represents U.S. interests on video quality issues in national and international standards committees. 

The Video Quality Standards Development Process

The Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG) provides a forum, via email lists and face-to-face meetings, for video quality assessment experts to exchange information and work together on common goals. ITS helped establish VQEG in 1997 and continues to actively support VQEG.

VQEG conducts independent validation test to evaluate whether objective video quality models are accurate enough for industry to trust. VQEG conducts collaborative research to develop new statistical methods and to modify subjective test methods for new video technologies. 

VQEG contributes its findings to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), to support the development of new and improved ITU Recommendations. The ITU works by consensus, meaning that member states must agree upon proposed updates to ITU Recs.

• Overview of ITU Recs. for video quality assessment
• Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG)

Historical Standards

In the 1990s, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and the ITU produced standard sets of video sequences for use in the evaluation of digital video systems. ATIS also produced a series of U.S. standards and technical reports on video quality. This work later moved to the ITU.  

• Historical ATIS standards and technical reports
• Standard video sequences for standard definition television

ITS Publications on Standards Development

• Quan Huynh-Thu, Arthur A. Webster, Kjell Brunnström, and Margaret H. Pinson, “VQEG: Shaping Standards on Video Quality,” Conference Paper, June 2015
• Nicolas Staelens et al., “Measuring Video Quality in the Network: From Quality of Service to User Experience,” Conference Paper, February 2015
• Margaret H. Pinson and Lucjan Janowski, “A New Subjective Audiovisual & Video Quality Testing Recommendation,” Journal Article, December 2014
• Margaret H. Pinson, Nicolas Staelens, and Arthur A. Webster, “The history of video quality model validation,” Conference Paper, September 2013
• Kjell Brunnström, David Hands, Filippo Speranza, and Arthur A. Webster, “VQEG Validation and ITU Standardization of Objective Perceptual Video Quality Metrics [Standards in a Nutshell],” Journal Article, May 2009
• Stephen Wolf et al., “Validating Objective Measures of MPEG Video Quality,” Journal Article, April 1998