Measurement of the blocking artefact in video frames

A method to automatically quantify the blocking artefact in video frames is presented. Two peculiar problems of the video blockiness are addressed, namely the shift in position of the blocking discontinuities in predicted frames, due to encoding with motion compensation, and the degradation of the edges of moving objects. Original solutions are proposed to detect both aspects and quantify their seriousness, avoiding erroneous detection caused by active areas, aliasing and ringing. Experiments show that the proposed indices respond coherently to the increase in video compression as well as in the subjective perception of blockiness.