Video Codec Scoring System – ViCoS

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Download:

• ViCoS presentation – detailed system description, pdf (670 kB)
  

Short Description

ViCoS is an advanced system with client-server architecture and relational data base support. It allows robust codec launches with user-friendly interface and functions for video codec or video filter analysis with results visualization.

The main purposes of the system:

Fully automatic quality evaluation of video processing systems using objective quality metrics and special sequences.

Both overall quality of the codec and quality of separate codec parts can be analyzed using the system.

Same framework can be used for codec's external options analysis and automatical selection of best presets for a given test set.

ViCoS also is used for Video Codecs Analysis and Tuning by YUVsoft Corp.

Pic.1 ViCoS Screenshots Other ViCoS screenshots are available at the Screenshot section.

Value Proposition

Perform QA with much lesser resources – ViCoS usage allows to do Quality Assurance tasks in a highly automatic way. Now video codec features or whole codec quality can be tested very easily without big number of QA specialists.

No need in subjective codec testing – ViCoS implements many different quality analyzers that can replace expensive subjective quality evaluation for almost every task.

Fast comparison to competitors – ViCoS provides functionality for video codecs comparison. Now codec developers can compare their video codec quality to competitors very fast and easily.

Choosing optimal default and predefined parameters – ViCoS can help to choose optimal (speed/quality trade-off) encoding parameters using preset analysis subsystem.

Compare different versions of product easily – ViCoS helps to perform quick speed and quality comparison of different versions of a codec or a video processing software.

Primary Applications

Video codec developers can

perform automatic Quality Assurance

compare to competitors

find weak points of codeρ easily

construct best set of predefined presets

Video codec users can

find the best codec for the desired purpose

find codec with desired speed/quality characteristics

Key Features

Client-server architecture – all codecs, analyzers and metric launches can be parallelized by executing on different PCs or cores of one PC.

Easy modifications – to add new codec, preset or video sequence a user needs to spend approximately 1 minute.

Robust launches – if a codec fails the system continues to work, marking the error for this codec.

DB usage – all results can be saved in a data base. ViCoS supports almost any relational data base management systems through ODBC mechanism: MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle, etc.

Result visualization – all obtained results can be visualized very quickly with user friendly-interface.

Huge Amount of Data Processing – during ViCoS work huge amount of data is produced, it is processed and categorized very easily and user friendly.

Specific Analysis Types – ViCoS uses specific types of analysis: well-known and specially developed (Edge capture, Borders quality, Tail area, Blurring, Synthetic motion, and more than 10 other types).

System Editions

Flexible customization is available for ViCoS system. There are five different editions which are optimal for different use cases.

Basic

Minimal set of tools for massive video codecs and filters comparison
Main features are:

• Calculate base set of quality metrics (PSNR, SSIM)
• Store results in multiple text files for further fast analysis using Excel, MATLAB, etc.
• Internal effective results storage is possible (useful for massive codecs runs)
• Robust against codecs crashes and equipment errors (testing process can be stopped any time without lost of results)

Standard

Minimal set of tools for massive video codecs and filters comparison and analysis
Basic Edition features plus:

• Additional video metrics (Blocking, Blurring, BI-PSNR)
• Basic set of analyzers for codec analysis:
  • Synthetic motion (ME analysis)
  • Noisy frames (RC analysis)
  • Noisy macroblocks (Mode Decision analysis)
  • Decimation (ME analysis)

QA

Off-the-shelf solution for video codec and video filter quality assurance
Standard Edition features plus:

• Massive parallelization possibility using multiple clients (client-server architecture)
• Results storage in relational database (MySQL). Useful for relative analysis and integration with existing QA systems
• Additional analyzers for advanced codec analysis:
  • BI-PSNR (luminance shift check)
  • Chroma ME (ME efficiency in color planes)
  • Objects tail area (Mode Decision analysis)

Options Analysis

Research and tuning of video codecs and video filters
Standard Edition features plus:

• Presets normalization: finding best preset with fixed complexity/encoding speed
• Best presets selection for all speed/quality tradeoffs
• Overall options analysis (efficiency of features analysis)

Enterprise

Comprehensive set of tools for video codecs and filters tuning, comparison and quality assurance QA Edition features plus Option Analysis features plus:

• MATLAB toolbox for advanced results analysis using enhanced visualization methods
• One year free system updates

Additional features can be implemented for customers by a special request.

Our Clients

Here is one of the references from users:

"...MSU Graphics and Multimedia Lab began to use ViCoS (Video Codec Scoring System) 4 years ago. The main task for that system was annual video codec comparison (for example Fifth MSU MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 Video Codec Comparison). ViCoS helped us to make codecs comparison process more automatical. Other very usefull functionality of ViCoS was optimal preset selection mechanism that helped to choose presets in the case when developpers did not provide optimal presets.

ViCoS system is useful for any video codec or video processing algorithm development company or groups that perform any codec comparison and analysis tasks. The system usage is quite easy, even a student or non-developer could use it. There are some key features that are most unique for ViCoS: client-server architecture, database usage and robustness to many codec or hardware failures. The number of quality analyzers being implemented in the system is surely enough for almost any codec comparison or analysis tasks."

Alexander Parshin,
Senior Researcher
Moscow State University
Graphics&Media Lab
Videocodec Testing Team

Screenshots

Here are some examples of result visualization. Click the image to see them in original size.

Perframe metric	Perframe metric visualization	Synthetic sequence

Synthetic sequence	ME analysis	ME analysis

visualization toolbox	visualization toolbox	Perframe metric

Contact Information

For any information or questions on ViCoS or video codec analysis and tuning contracts, please contact our