Visibility prediction of flicker distortions on naturalistic videos

We conducted a series of human subjective studies where we found that the visibility of flicker distortions on naturalistic videos is strongly reduced when the speed of coherent object motion is large. Based on this, we propose a model of flicker visibility on naturalistic videos. The model predicts target-related activation levels in the excitatory layer of neurons for a video using spatiotemporal backward masking. The target-related activation level is then shifted and scaled according to video quality level changes that cause flicker distortions. Finally, flicker visibility is predicted based on neural flicker adaptation processes. Results show that the predicted flicker visibility using the model correlates well with human perception of flicker distortions on naturalistic videos.