Measuring multimedia quality in mobile networks with an objective parametric model

The perceived quality of a multimedia stream can be estimated with good accuracy with a parametric no-reference opinion model taking codec, total coded bitrate, packet loss rate, and buffering events as input. A rebuffering event in a multimedia stream severely reduces the perceived quality with up to 1.5 MOS units for a QCIF video. High packet loss rates can reduce the quality with as much as 2.5 MOS units. The effect of these two degradation types has been combined in a non-linear way together with information about codec and coded bitrate to form a parametric no-reference objective opinion model. The model shows good performance with RMSE of 0.33 and correlation coefficient of 0.93.