Perceptually-Weighted Video Quality Metric for Asymmetric Encoded Sports Videos

Meyer A, Janzen J, Kadagathur Lakshmana Reddy DR, Kopte A, Deniffel S, Wawerek-López P, Windsheimer M, Kaup A (2026)

Publication Language: English

Publication Type: Conference contribution, Conference Contribution

Publication year: 2026

Conference Proceedings Title: International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX)

Event location: Cardiff GB

Abstract

Objective video quality metrics commonly assume uniform spatial attention, an assumption that conflicts with the selective nature of human visual perception, particularly in sports videos. Here, allocating more bits for salient regions through semantic encoding can lead to significant bitrate savings. We present a Perceptually-Weighted Video Quality Metric (PW-VQM), a full-reference metric that accounts for the unequal perceptual importance of spatial regions and therefore targets quality evaluation for asymmetrically encoded content. SSIM maps computed in a multiscale wavelet domain are weighted by differentiating between foreground and background regions. Perceptually salient foreground regions are identified by combining open-vocabulary object detection with optical flow analysis, and are assigned higher weight during quality aggregation. Evaluated on sports video content, PW-VQM achieves a Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient of 0.9511, outperforming established metrics including SSIM, VMAF, FUNQUE, and LPIPS. An ablation study confirms the individual contributions of the components of the perceptual weighting.

Authors with CRIS profile

Anna Meyer Lehrstuhl für Multimediakommunikation und Signalverarbeitung (LMS) Jonas Janzen Lehrstuhl für Multimediakommunikation und Signalverarbeitung (LMS) Diwakara Reddy Kadagathur Lakshmana Reddy Lehrstuhl für Multimediakommunikation und Signalverarbeitung (LMS) Alexander Kopte Lehrstuhl für Multimediakommunikation und Signalverarbeitung (LMS) Simon Deniffel Lehrstuhl für Multimediakommunikation und Signalverarbeitung (LMS) Paul Wawerek-López Lehrstuhl für Multimediakommunikation und Signalverarbeitung (LMS) Marc Windsheimer Lehrstuhl für Multimediakommunikation und Signalverarbeitung (LMS) Andre Kaup Lehrstuhl für Multimediakommunikation und Signalverarbeitung (LMS)

How to cite

APA:

Meyer, A., Janzen, J., Kadagathur Lakshmana Reddy, D.R., Kopte, A., Deniffel, S., Wawerek-López, P.,... Kaup, A. (2026). Perceptually-Weighted Video Quality Metric for Asymmetric Encoded Sports Videos. In International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX). Cardiff, GB.

MLA:

Meyer, Anna, et al. "Perceptually-Weighted Video Quality Metric for Asymmetric Encoded Sports Videos." Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX’26), Cardiff 2026.

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