Design of a Synthetic Test Sequence and a Metric for Evaluation of Mosquito Noise Due to Video Codecs

In this paper a new synthetic test sequence for evaluation of mosquito noise (MN) due to video codecs is presented with accompanying detection algorithm. The approach and methodology are based on a specially designed test pattern that highlights the MN artefacts. Because of its codec independence, MN can be measured for all types of compression methods like MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.264, XVid, DivX.. A micro level investigation of the compression algorithm (encoder) that was used to compress the test sequence revealed that the distortion can be characterised by not just the sense of fluctuation of spatial intensity or colour values with time, but furthermore by the temporal intermittency of the MN level due to the GOP-structure that is used by the codec. The paper presents the rationale behind the design of the test pattern and the video sequence that was generated to stress video codecs to highlight mosquito noise artefacts. The paper also outlines an algorithm to detect.