PERCEVAL - Perceptual and Cognitive Quality Evaluation Techniques for Audiovisual Systems

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Today, there exists very few methodology and software to assess the complex effects of human audiovisual quality perception. Especially the combination of multi-modal perception where audio and video stimuli interact are largely unexplored. Current object ive and subjective assessment methods approach the problem mainly from a technical perspective considering frame rates, spatial resolutions and distortion artifacts. The perceptual and cognitive side of quality experience is thereby frequently ignored. M ost methods also require a controlled laboratory environment, restrict stimuli duration to a few seconds and demand full attention from assessors. This makes them inadequate for long-term evaluation of user sensations in real application scenarios where perceptual, affective and cognitive factors are of paramount importance. In response, the proposed research project aims to develop a novel approach to multi-modal quality assessment for audiovisual systems by considering cognitive, perceptual and affe ctive quality attributes. We approach the challenges with an interdisciplinary research team, consisting of researches from cognitive psychology, sensory analysis of food and multimedia technology. Although this research may be applicable to many multi-mo dal applications, we focus on two key scenarios, the World Opera project and scalable video coding. Mid-term goal of the project are robust subjective assessment methods for multi-modal quality evaluation that allow long-term evaluation sessions an requi re minimal attention from assessors. The final goal is an objective metric for multi-modal quality assessment that can be used for automated quality tests in many audiovisual applications.