Secrets of Video Quality

Title of the talk: Secrets of Video Quality

Speaker: Alan Bovik, Director, Laboratory for Image & Video Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA

Date: 13 December 2024

YouTube link to the talk: https://youtu.be/aywa-Lj44Ww

Talk summary: Predicting perceptual video quality is a hard problem that has been successfully addressed in many scenarios, such as quality control of streaming and sharing of videos. However, videos continue to ‘get bigger’ along every dimension including frame rate, bit depth, colour gamut, spatial dimensionality, and fusion with generative methods. In this talk, Alan Bovik addressed how perceptual video quality can be understood using principles of visual neuroscience and neuro-statistical models of distortion. In particular, he reviewed the basic vision science that makes accurate perceptual video quality prediction possible and how algorithms can be designed that are now used worldwide. He also discussed extensions to new and timely problems that involve the quality prediction of high/variable frame rate videos (HFR/VFR), which are of interest for future live sport streaming and high dynamic range videos (HDR), which are becoming common in video streaming of home cinema.

Speaker biography: Alan Bovik is the Cockrell Family Regents Endowed Chair Professor at The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests land at the nexus of visual neuroscience and digital pictures and videos. His recent interests include immersive, virtual, and augmented visual experiences, and how they can be perceptually optimised. An elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, and Academia Europaea, his many honours include the John Fritz Medal, IEEE Edison Medal, Primetime Emmy Award, Technology & Engineering Emmy Award, RPS Progress Medal, and Edwin H. Land Medal.