Subjective effects of d.p.c.m. errors and predictor leak on visual telephone pictures

A technique for reducing the visibility of transmission errors in television signals which have been digitally encoded using differential pulse-code modulation(d.p.c.m.) is to weight the predicted value of the signal by a factor less than unity. This prediction `leak¿ has the effect of reducing the extent of the propagation, and hence the visibility, of transmission errors, but it may also increase the quantising distortion. A closely controlled subjective investigation of this error visibility against quantising distortion trade-off is described. Details of both the equipment and procedure followed are given and a mathematical model is derived to allow the plotting of curves of constant impairment for varying leak factor and error rate. The investigation indicated that for moderate channel error rates, a leak factor of 15/16 is a good compromise between error visibility and quantisation distoration.