Perceptually-friendly rate distortion optimization in high efficiency video coding

We propose the employment of a perceptual video quality metric in measuring the distortion in the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) Standard. The mean square error presently used as quality metric is not a good measure to use, as it poorly correlates with human perception. Integration of a video quality metric based on the characteristics of the Human Visual System (HVS) inside the rate distortion optimization procedure is expected to improve the compression efficiency of the video coding. In this paper, the PSNR-HVS measure is used in the rate distortion optimization process. The compression efficiency of the proposed approach is compared to that used by HEVC, the recent video coding standard. Simulations prove that the proposed approach yields higher compression efficiency and provides better visual quality.