Subjective Assessment of Region of Interest-Aware Adaptive Multimedia Streaming Quality

Adaptive multimedia streaming relies on adjusting the video content´s bit-rate meet network conditions in the quest to reduce packet loss and resulting video quality degradations. Current multimedia adaptation schemes uniformly adjust the compression over the entire image area. However, research has shown that user attention is focused mostly on certain image areas, denoted areas of maximum user interest (AMUI), and their interest decreases with the increase in distance to the AMUI. The region of interest-based adaptive multimedia streaming scheme (ROIAS) is introduced to perform bit-rate adaptation to network conditions by adjusting video quality relative to the AMUI location. This paper also extends ROIAS to support multiple areas of maximum user interest within the same video frame. This paper presents the performance analysis of ROIAS in terms of the impact on user perceived video quality measured using subjective video quality assessment techniques based on human subjects. The tests use a wide range of video clips, which differ in terms of spatial and temporal complexity and region of interest location and variation. A comparative evaluation of both subjective and objective video quality test results is performed and demonstrate the benefit of using ROIAS for adaptive video quality delivery.