NR-Bitstream video quality metrics for SSIM using encoding decisions in AVC and HEVC coded videos

•Proposed NR-Bitstream SSIM model of AVC and HEVC do not need pixel domain features.•Block-Partition features are important in SSIM prediction especially for HEVC.•Proposed common model performs well for AVC (0.78 correlation) and HEVC (0.88).•Proposed common model is up to 13.13% better than the latest method in correlation.•Proposed method requires much less computational complexity than the latest method.

We propose a no-reference compressed video quality model to predict the full-reference SSIM metrics for AVC (Advanced Video Coding, H.264) and HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) videos. The model we use is support vector regression (SVR) model. We use only encoding decisions made during motion estimation to perform the prediction, and do not need the information from pixel domain. We show that the Block-Partition-related features have great importance in SSIM prediction, especially for HEVC videos, due to its partition decisions being more complex than those of AVC. The proposed SVR model trained by data of two different encoding configurations can predict SSIM well for AVC videos (0.78 correlation) and for HEVC videos (0.88 correlation). The proposed models are also compared with a state-of-the-art no-reference-bitstream-pixel SSIM prediction model. We show that the proposed methods provide higher prediction correlation (as high as 13.13% improvement in correlation) with much lower complexity.