IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 16, NO.
2, FEBRUARY 2006 251
A Method of Estimating Coding PSNR
Using Quantized DCT Coefficients
Atsuro Ichigaya, Masaaki Kurozumi, Naohiro Hara, Yukihiro Nishida, and Eisuke Nakasu
Abstract—A new method of estimating coding peak signal-to-
noise ratio (PSNR) without the use of reference signals is pre-
sented. Although PSNR is commonly used as a measure of the
picture degradation of digitally coded video, the calculation re-
quires source signals as a reference.Therefore, the usage of PSNR
is restricted to particular applications or systems. The proposed
method enables PSNR estimation based on the probability density
functions of quantized discrete cosine transform (DCT) coeffi-
cients extracted from an MPEG-2 bit stream. We experimented
with MPEG-2 video coding bit streams under varying quantiza-
tion scheme and evaluate a new method with comparing estimated
PSNRs with actual PSNRs. Experimental results indicate that the
determination coefficients are higher than 0.9 This method can
apply to both SDTV and HDTV, and can evaluate PSNR of every
frame coded by different picture types.
Index Terms—Discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients,
Laplacian distribution, MPEG-2 bit stream, peak signal-to-noise
ratio (PSNR), quantization.
I. INTRODUCTION
V IDEO CODING systems are widely used for digital video
delivery and recording systems and the monitoring of
video quality has become increasingly important. The degree
of coding degradation varies depending on the criticality of
the source video and careful observation of long sequences is
necessary for monitoring the picture quality continuously. This
is a laborious task for operators when managing the quality
of services, and so a quantitative technique for automatically
monitoring video quality is strongly desired.
For monitoring purposes, a measurement system that does
not require reference signals is preferred. This type of system is
called a no-reference (NR) method [1]. Video quality measure-
ment without the original sequence is classified into two types:
methods using decoded video signals, and methods using infor-
mation contained in a bit stream.
The former type of system assumes noise models for several
spatial and/or temporal features including blockiness, edge en-
ergy, etc. This method can be applied to perceived video quality
based on human visual system (HVS) models. Wang et al. pro-
posed the blocking effect measurement algorithm by analyzing
the power of the blocky signal in the frequency domain [2]. Wu
Manuscript received May 30, 2004; revised March 23, 2005. This paper was
recommended by Associate Editor L. Onural.
The authors are with the NHK Science and Technical Research Lab-
oratories, Tokyo 157-8510, Japan (e-mail: ichigaya.a-go@nhk.or.jp;
kurozumi.m-fo@nhk.or.jp; hara.n-fy@nhk.or.jp; nishida.y-fe@nhk.or.jp;
nakasu.e-hm@nhk.or.jp).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCSVT.2005.858745
1051-8215/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
et al. proposed the block-edge impairment metric (BIM) [3],
taking into consideration the luminance masking effects.
Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), which is calculated as
the error between the original and the processed pictures, is
one of the common measures of coding degradation. However,
the calculation of PSNR requires source signals as a reference.
Turaga et al. proposed a PSNR estimation method without
original pictures [4]. They estimated PSNR based on the statis-
tical properties of discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients
by supposing the coding parameters from the decoded pictures.
Although the metric shows good performance for estimating
the quality of intra-pictures under fixed quantization schemes,
it is not applicable for predicted pictures.
The latter type of system utilizes several coding parameters
extracted from coded bit streams for estimating the picture
quality. The coding error can be estimated from the quantiza-
tion parameters of DCT coefficients, which are derived from a
bit stream. Methods using coded bit streams are also suitable
for monitoring purposes when the coding scheme is fixed as in
the case of broadcasting.
Knee reported a method of NR-type quality measurement
based on MPEG-2 bit stream information [5], [6]. The method
uses DCT coefficient data, the number of coefficient bits, and
quantizer_scale, and shows good performance for estimating
PSNR (called “PAR”) using the statistical characteristics of
video images. However, preliminary experiments are required
to determine the calibration parameters, and a process is needed
to update parameter values for estimating PSNR of P- and
B-picture at every I-picture.
Yan et al. proposed a rate distortion model based on a dis-
tortion-quantization model for low bit rate coding [7]. Karray
et al. described the statistical properties of the reconstruction
error caused by quantization [8]. Both studied the new quantiza-
tion model analyzing the statistical property of source pictures.
In this paper, we propose a new method of estimating PSNR
from MPEG-2 [9] bit streams under a rate control scheme. This
method estimates DCT quantization noises based on statistical
properties of quantized DCT coefficients and utilizes several
coding parameters in a coded bit stream. The source information
required for calculating PSNR is derived by analyzing the statis-
tical properties of decoded pictures. The method supports PSNR
estimation for each frame of every picture type without prelim-
inary experiments for calibration. Section II presents the sta-
tistical characteristics of quantized DCT coefficients. The pro-
posed method for estimating picture quality based on MPEG-2
bit stream is explained in Section III. The proposed algorithms
are evaluated through actual coding experiments for both SDTV
252 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2006
and HDTV, and the results are presented in Section IV. The con-
clusion of this work is provided at the end.
II. CHARACTERISTICS OF QUANTIZED DCT COEFFICIENTS
A. Statistical Characteristics of DCT Coefficients
The amplitude distribution of DCT ac coefficients of source
video signals can be modeled as the generalized Gaussian distri-
bution [10]–[12]. The probability density function (pdf) of the
generalized Gaussian distribution is defined by
(1)
is the standard Gamma function. Parameters and are
related to the shape and standard deviation of the distribution.
Parameter defines the kurtosis [13].
(2)
Some studies have reported that the DCT coefficients of the
ac component can be approximated as a Laplacian distribution,
which is a generalized Gaussian distribution [14]–[16]. The pdf
of the Laplacian distribution is given by (1) when and
. The probability function is characterized by
the standard deviation
(3)
The amplitude distribution characteristics of the intra-dc co-
efficients do not show conformity with those of the ac coeffi-
cients. The probability distribution of intra-dc largely depends
on the picture contents and cannot be represented as a single
model.
MPEG-2 video coding employs the motion-compensated
prediction scheme to achieve high compression ratio. The pre-
diction error signal is a differential signal between the current
and the prediction signals. The non-intra-DCT coefficients also
show the Laplacian distribution statistically [17].
B. Statistical Characteristics of Quantized DCT Coefficients
The DCT coefficients are rounded off through a quantization
process, producing a quantization representative value. The dis-
tribution of quantized coefficients shows comb-like shapes as
depicted in Fig. 1. In the MPEG-2 video standard, the inverse
quantization process is applied to all DCT coefficients, which,
except for the intra-dc coefficient, are given by
where
(4)
is the resulting coefficient after the inverse quan-
tization and signifies the quantization representative value.
is the quantization index. is the
quantization weighting matrix for each DCT coefficient within
Fig. 1. Probability density distribution of DCT coefficient distributions in a
component (u = 1, v = 0), when quantization interval SS is 32.
a DCT block and can be varied for each frame. The quan-
tizer_scale gives the quantizer step size for bit rate control and
can be varied for each macroblock. The quantization repre-
sentative value for the th index is expressed by (5). is
determined by quantization interval . is quan-
tizer_scale_code, which is an index of the quantizer_scale.
where
(5)
The intra-dc coefficients are quantized linearly and the dif-
ference values are transmitted between the adjacent blocks. The
quantization process of intra-dc coefficients is given by:
where
(6)
is the resulting intra-dc coefficient after the inverse
quantization and signifies the intra-dc quantization repre-
sentative value. is an intra-dc quantization index.
dct_dc_pred is the predictor. dct_diff is information about the
dc coefficient extracted from bit streams. intra_dc_mult is
the quantized value determined by intra_dc_precision. Fig. 2
shows (a) the distribution of decoded dc coefficients and (b)
the distribution of dct_diff values. Although the shape distri-
bution of decoded dc coefficients is not constant and does not
have common properties for each sequence, the distribution of
dct_diff, which is calculated as an adjacent difference value of
quantized dc coefficients, can be assumed to be the Laplacian
distribution [18].
C. Analysis of Quantized Distribution
In order to conform the distribution of quantized coefficients
to the function models of nonquantized DCT distribution, we
examined two statistical parameters: the kurtosis and the stan-
dard deviation. The coding conditions were as follows:
• MPEG-2 MP@HL ( , );
• encoding scheme: Test Model 5 [19];
• bit rate: 18 Mbit/s;
• quantization matrix: default;
ICHIGAYA et al.: METHOD OF ESTIMATING CODING PSNR
Fig. 2. Histogram of intra-dc coefficients and dct_diff of the sequence
“Crowded Crosswalk.”
• (non linear)’
• test material: three HDTV test sequences [20], “Whale
Show,” “Chromakey (Sprinkling),” and “Crowded Cross-
walk” (1920 1080/59.94i, 5 s).
1) Analysis on the Kurtosis: The kurtosis, , is the degree
of peakedness of a distribution and is defined as a normalized
form of the fourth central moment of a distribution by
(7)
The kurtosis is a parameter used to adjust the configuration of
the generalized Gaussian distribution. The larger the kurtosis,
the sharper the shape of the distribution. The kurtosis of the
Laplacian distribution and the Gaussian distribution is 6 and 3,
respectively.
Fig. 3 shows the relationship of the kurtosis distribution
of each component before and after quantization for (a)
intra-coded macroblocks and (b) non-intra-coded macroblocks.
The kurtosis of the distribution of quantized coefficients be-
comes larger than that of the source coefficients. It is difficult to
evaluate source distribution shapes from the shape of decoded
distributions because the kurtosis of the quantized distribu-
tion undergoes significant change. Table I shows the average
kurtosis of each sequence on the distribution of source and
quantized DCT coefficients. It indicates the difficulty in calcu-
lating the value of parameter from a quantized distribution.
2) Analysis of the Standard Deviation: Fig. 4 shows the re-
lationship of standard deviations of the distribution before and
after quantization for (a) intra-coded macroblocks and (b) non-
intra-coded macroblocks. In both coding types, the standard de-
viation of the source and quantized DCT coefficients are almost
253
Fig. 3. Relationship of kurtosis between source and quantized DCT coefficient
distributions.
equal. In the non-intra-coded macroblocks, the standard devia-
tion of the quantized DCT coefficients is smaller than that of the
source.
When the DCT coefficient values are significantly smaller
than the quantizer step size, most of the quantized coefficients
become zero and the standard deviation is smaller than that of
the source signals. This often occurs since the quantization of
non-intra-coded macroblocks is a rounding-off process with a
dead zone around zero [21] and the DCT coefficient values of
motion-compensated picture differences are smaller than those
of intra-macroblocks. It shows that the standard deviation after
quantization almost corresponds to the original one.
III. FRAMEWORK OF ESTIMATING PSNR
A. Principles of Estimating PSNR
Picture quality degradation associated with MPEG-2 coding
occurs due to the quantization of DCT coefficients. PSNR rep-
resents the amount of coding errors, which is the difference be-
tween the source and decoded video signals as given by
(8)
where and are the sample values of the source signal and
the corresponding decoded signal at sample number .
254 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2006
TABLE I
AVERAGE KURTOSIS OF EACH HDTV SEQUENCES
Fig. 4. Relationship of standard deviations between source and quantized DCT
coefficient distributions.
is a peak signal amplitude and equals 255 in the case of 8-bit
representation.
According to Parseval’s Theorem, the MSE in the pixel
domain is equivalent to the mean square quantization error
(MSQE) in the DCT domain because DCT is a normalized
orthogonal transformation. Therefore, it is possible to measure
PSNR from the quantization error in the DCT domain, using
the following equation:
(9)
where and are the DCT coefficients of the source signal
and the corresponding decoded signal. When amplitude distri-
butions of DCT coefficients of the source are given, the value of
the quantization error is obtained from
(10)
where denotes the probability density function
(pdf) of DCT coefficient value at for each quantized
step size, and is the quantization representative value for the
quantization interval number . is the total sample
number of the DCT coefficient at for each quantized step
size. The quantization interval is expressed using the notation
[ , ).
The results of preliminary experiments for analyzing the char-
acteristics of quantized DCT coefficients indicate that the PSNR
estimating model based on the Laplacian distribution is more
suitable than the generalized Gaussian function because the kur-
tosis cannot be used for estimating distribution. Since the Lapla-
cian distribution is determined by the standard deviation, we can
estimate source distributions after quantization distribution. In
our estimation scheme, the distribution of DCT coefficients is
modeled in the form of the Laplacian distribution.
The estimation should be carried out for each quantized step
size. The whole distribution that consists of all quantized step
sizes shows the properties of whole images. On encoding with
rate control, part of the image that is quantized by the same
quantized step size has different properties from the whole im-
ages. In short, the standard deviation depends on quantizer step
size. This means that it is necessary to calculate MSQE for each
quantized step size.
In the MPEG-2 coding scheme, there are three types of
picture that use different prediction methods. I-picture is coded
using information of its own, and P-picture and B-picture are
coded using motion-compensated prediction from reference
frame(s).
The quantization of intra-dc coefficients is linear and the step
size is constant in a frame. Since the shape of dc component dis-
tribution is strongly dependent on the picture contents, intra-dc
coefficients are estimated using the difference value for quan-
tized coefficients between adjacent blocks. In the intra-coding,
the dct_diff value is analyzed instead of the dc coefficient it-
self. The distribution of the dct_diff value can be assumed to be
Laplacian distribution.
In the non-intra-coding, decoded pictures can be expressed as
, where is an input image and is a prediction
image at time instance . denotes DCT, quantization and
their inverse processes. Then, the coding error is expressed
by
(11)
ICHIGAYA et al.: METHOD OF ESTIMATING CODING PSNR 255

Equation (11) indicates that for P- and B-pictures, MSQE can

be calculated for prediction error signals, which is equivalent to
that of decoded image signals. In P- and B-pictures, there are
noncoded blocks, where no DCT coefficient data is transmitted
and there is no information available for estimating MSQE in the
coded bit stream. Therefore, MSQE is calculated using coded
blocks only

(12)

where and are ratios of intra-coded blocks and non-intra-

coded blocks among all coded blocks.
The quantization interval is not defined in the MPEG-2 video
standard, and it can be arranged as a factor of the encoder de-
sign. Since the coded bit stream does not include any informa-
tion on the quantization interval, quantization interval [ , ) is
required to estimate coding PSNR. The quantization represen-
tative value is assumed to be located at the midpoint of the
quantization interval [ , ) as follows:
(13)
Using (3), (9), (10), and (12), PSNR is obtained by the following
procedure:
Step 1) Extract quantized DCT coefficients and decode quan-
tization step size from a bit stream.
Step 2) For each DCT coefficient component and quan-
tization step size , calculate the standard
deviation .
Step 3) Estimate pdf of source DCT coeffi-
cients by (3).
Step 4) Calculate MSQE by (10).
Step 5) Calculate PSNR by (12) and (9).
B. Compensation Method of Estimating the Distribution
In the case of coarse quantization, many quantized DCT co-
efficients are rounded off to zero by quantization and the stan-
dard deviation of the distribution of quantized DCT coefficients
tends to become roughly zero, smaller than that of the source
distribution. Where quantized DCT coefficients are around zero,
the Laplacian model works well, but other DCT coefficients are
not inappropriate [22]. This situation often occurs for high-fre-
quency components of intra-coded macroblocks because of the
slope of a quantization matrix and all frequency components of
non-intra-macroblocks.
Fig. 5 shows an example case in which most of the coeffi-
cients become zero after quantization. The estimated standard
deviation of the distribution becomes much smaller than that of
the source distribution. MSQE is then estimated smaller than
the actual value, and hence the estimation accuracy of DCT
quantization error is reduced. In these cases, the estimated stan-
dard deviation is excessively dominated by the zero coefficients.
The Laplacian distribution, which is a two-sided exponential
distribution, becomes roughly zero on the lower slope. There-
fore, the estimated distribution does not admit the existence of
nonzero coefficients. In order to improve the estimation accu-
racy, nonzero coefficients should be treated carefully.
Fig. 5. Probability density distribution of DCT coefficients at DCT component
(u = 6, v = 1), when quantization interval SS is 68.
When a quantizer step size is sufficiently small, the standard
deviation of the distribution is almost preserved irrespective of
the inclusion/exclusion of zero-value coefficients. On the other
hand, when a quantizer step size is large, the standard deviation
of quantized DCT coefficients including zero is smaller than the
source standard deviation, and the standard deviation excluding
zero-value coefficients is larger than the source standard devia-
tion (Fig. 5).
Therefore, in order to improve the estimation accuracy, we
introduce an extended Laplacian function as follows:
(14)
The parameter controls the spread of the function. The
is a Laplacian pdf scaled by the second exponential func-
tion which is constant value under . When is small enough,
this function is closer to the standard Laplacian pdf. We apply
this function to eliminate the influence of quantized zero coeffi-
cients. The value of is determined by the quantization interval
around the zero value. This function is used for estimating the
distribution configuration as follows.
Step 1) Measure the standard deviation for the distribution
of quantized DCT coefficients by frequency of
the quantization representative value and estimate
pdf , as in the estimation method described in
Section III-A
(15)
Step 2) Measure the standard deviation for the distribu-
tion of quantized DCT coefficients excluding the zero-
value coefficients and estimate probability distribution
which is a extended Laplacian distribution
where
256 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2006

TABLE V
AVERAGE ERROR BETWEEN ESTIMATED WITH
COMPENSATION AND ACTUAL PSNR

TABLE VI
STANDARD DEVIATION OF ERROR BETWEEN ESTIMATED
WITH COMPENSATION AND ACTUAL PSNR

Fig. 6. Compensated probability density distribution of DCT coefficients in

DCT component (u = 6, v = 1), when quantization interval SS is 68.

TABLE VII
TABLE II COEFFICIENTS OF DETERMINATION R BETWEEN ESTIMATED
AVERAGE ERROR BETWEEN ESTIMATED WITHOUT WITH COMPENSATION AND ACTUAL PSNR
COMPENSATION AND ACTUAL PSNR

TABLE VIII
VARIANCE OF RESIDUAL BETWEEN REGRESSION ESTIMATE
TABLE III WITH COMPENSATION AND ACTUAL VALUES
STANDARD DEVIATION OF ESTIMATION ERROR BETWEEN ESTIMATED
WITHOUT COMPENSATION AND ACTUAL PSNR

TABLE IX
AVERAGE ERROR BETWEEN ESTIMATED WITH COMPENSATION AND
ACTUAL VALUES OF “WHALE SHOW”, “CROWDED CROSSWALK”
TABLE IV AND “CHROMAKEY (SPRINKLING)” IN SDTV, 5 MBIT/S
COEFFICIENTS OF DETERMINATION R BETWEEN ESTIMATED
WITHOUT COMPENSATION AND ACTUAL PSNR

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

A. Experiment Result of Estimating PSNR Without
Compensation
(16) We have executed simulations of the estimation of PSNR
using MPEG-2 bit streams. The bit streams were produced by
where the Test Model 5 under the following conditions:
Step 3) Obtain pdf as an weighted average of and • MPEG-2 MP@ML and MP@HL ( , )’
which are the Laplacian pdfs • encoding scheme: Test Model 5 (TM5);
• quantization matrix: default;
(17) • (non linear);
• video sequences: 12 SDTV (720 480/59.94i, 15 sec)
and 12 HDTV (1920 1080/59.94i, 5 s);
As shown in Fig. 6, the compensated distribution has moved • bit rate: 5 Mbit/s (SDTV), 18 Mbit/s, and 60 Mbit/s
closer to the source distribution. (HDTV).
ICHIGAYA et al.: METHOD OF ESTIMATING CODING PSNR
Fig. 7. Relationship of PSNR between estimation with compensation and actual values on I-, P-, and B-pictures (SDTV 5 Mbit/s).
Fig. 8. Relationship of PSNR between estimation with compensation and actual values on I-, P-, and B-pictures (HDTV 60 Mbit/s).
We considered that the streams of 5 Mbit/s (SDTV) and
18 Mbit/s (HDTV) are for broadcasting (to the home) service
and 60 Mbit/s is for contribution and distribution. The video
sequences used include a variety of criticality [23], resulting in
a wide distribution of coding PSNR.
PSNR of each video frame was estimated without compen-
sation described in Section III A and the results are shown in
Tables II and III. These tables show the average error and the
standard deviation of estimation error between estimated and
actual PSNR values for I-, P-, and B-pictures, including all the
sequences. The results indicate that this metric shows estimated
PSNRs as being higher than the actual values in all picture
types, which demonstrates the influence of coarse quantization.
Table IV show the determination coefficient in the results of
regression analysis.
In the case of coarse quantization, almost all DCT coefficients
round to zero and the standard deviation becomes around zero,
and so the quantization error is estimated lower than the actual
amount and the estimated PSNR becomes higher.
In the general coding scheme, the allocation bit rate for
B-picture is less than that for the other pictures and coarser
quantizers are employed. This frequently causes a rounding
of DCT coefficients to zero or the occurrence of noncoded
macroblocks, where the standard deviation of the distribution
of quantized DCT coefficients is much smaller than that of the
source distribution. Under the coding condition of HDTV at
18 Mbit/s, approximately 70% of the macroblocks in a picture
are processed as noncoded macroblocks in the B-picture.
Consequently, estimation was conducted using only 30% of
the whole macroblocks in the B-picture, which led to a larger
257
mismatch in the estimation process. This tendency also appears
for high-frequency DCT components in intra-coded blocks,
which are quantized coarsely. In our method, the higher the bit
rate, the smaller the standard deviation of estimation error.
B. Experimental Results of Estimating PSNR With
Compensation
In this section, the performance of PSNR estimation
with compensation is shown. We conducted tests using the
same bit streams as in the previous experiment, described in
Section IV-A.
The results are shown in Tables V and VI. These tables show
the average error and the standard deviation of estimation error
between estimated and actual PSNR values for I-, P-, and B-pic-
tures, including all the sequences. In all cases except for HDTV
18 Mbit/s in B-picture, the average error is within 1.0 dB.
However, the case of HDTV 18 Mbit/s in B-picture is also im-
proved in terms of the standard deviation of error. This indicates
the effectiveness of the compensation process.
Tables VII and VIII show the determination coefficient
and the residual variance in the results of regression analysis.
In all cases except for HDTV 18 Mbit/s in B-picture, the coeffi-
cients of determination coefficient increase to more than 0.95. In
the case of HDTV 18 Mbit/s in B-picture, the determination co-
efficient increases to more than 0.9. This indicates that although
the average error of HDTV 18 Mbit/s in B-picture is large, it is
expected that the estimation error can be reduced by utilizing
the regression estimation.
Table IX shows the average error between estimated and ac-
tual PSNR values of three sequences. The error of “Crowded
258 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2006
Fig. 9. Relationship of PSNR between estimation with compensation and actual values on I-, P-, and B-pictures (HDTV 18 Mbit/s).
Crosswalk” is the largest. Compared with Table I, the kurtosis
of the two sequences except “Crowded Crosswalk” is approxi-
mately 6. This shows the distribution is similar to the Laplacian
distribution but “Crowded Crosswalk” is inappropriate. Hence,
the degree of estimation error depends on the goodness of fit to
the Laplacian distribution.
Figs. 7–9 show the relationship of PSNR between values
estimated with compensation and actual values on I-, P-, and
B-pictures at each bit rate. The results show that the estimation
method can be used for both SDTV and HDTV under varying
quantization schemes.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper presents a method of estimating PSNR of digi-
tally coded video using the information extracted from MPEG-2
bit streams. The estimation algorithm is based on the statistical
property of the pdf of quantized DCT coefficients and assumes
that the distribution of the DCT coefficients approximates the
Laplacian distribution.
We conducted some experiments to verify the performance of
our method using various sequences under different coding con-
ditions. Experimental results indicate that the determination co-
efficients between estimated PSNR and actual PSNR are higher
than 0.9. The averages of estimation errors are within 1.0 dB
except for HDTV 18 Mbit/s in B-picture. This method is avail-
able for both SDTV and HDTV, and can evaluate PSNR of every
frame coded by different picture types.
While our proposed method seems to provide reasonable per-
formance for monitoring systems, the factors of PSNR estima-
tion errors need to be estimated in order to achieve higher es-
timation accuracy especially at high compression ratios. Future
studies should include, for example, examining the Laplacian
assumption and the estimation errors of the standard deviation
of the quantized coefficients.
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ICHIGAYA et al.: METHOD OF ESTIMATING CODING PSNR 259

Atsuro Ichigaya received the B.E. degree in en-
gineering systems and the M.E. degree in science
and engineering from the University of Tsukuba,
Tsukuba, Japan, in 1996 and 1998, respectively.
He joined NHK, Tokyo, Japan, in 1998 and has
been with NHK Science and Technical Research Lab-
oratories since 2000. He is in charge of research and
development of video monitoring systems and digital
video processing.
Mr. Ichigaya is a member of VRSJ, IEICE, and
the Institute of Image Information and Television
Engineers (ITE) of Japan.
Naohiro Hara received the B.E. degree in image
engineering from Chiba University, Chiba, Japan, in
1998.
He joined NHK, Tokyo, Japan, in 1998 and has
been with NHK Science and Technical Research Lab-
oratories since 2000. He is in charge of research and
development of digital video processing and video
coding.
Mr. Hara is a member of IEICE and ITE of Japan

Yukihiro Nishida received the B.E. and M.E. de-

grees in electrical engineering from Keio University,
Yokohama, Japan, in 1983 and 1985, respectively.
He joined NHK, Tokyo, Japan, in 1985. He was a
Visiting Research Engineer at RAI Research Center,
Turin, Italy, in 1992. He is a Senior Research Engi-
neer at NHK Science and Technical Research Lab-
oratories, where he is in charge of research and de-
velopment of video coding and quality evaluation.
He participates in numerous standardization activi-
ties in the area of broadcasting.
Mr. Nishida is a member of ITE of Japan.

Masaaki Kurozumi received the B.E. degree in elec-
tronics from Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, in
1993, and the M.E. degree in information processing
from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology,
Ikoma, Japam, in 1995.
In 1995, he joined NHK, Tokyo, Japan, and
worked as a Broadcasting Engineer at the Osaka
Broadcasting Station. Since 1997, he has been with
NHK Science and Technical Research Laboratories,
and is engaged in research on picture coding.
Mr. Kurozumi is a member of ITE of Japan.
Eisuke Nakasu (M’89) received the B.E. and
M.E. degrees in electrical engineering from Keio
University, Yokohama, Japan, in 1980 and 1982,
respectively.
He joined NHK, Tokyo, Japan, in 1982. He is a Se-
nior Research Engineer at NHK Science and Tech-
nical Research Laboratories, where he is in charge
of research and development of digital broadcasting
systems, video coding and quality evaluation.
Mr. Nakasu is a member of IEICE, ITE, and IPS
of Japan.