PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF MPEG-2 VIDEO CODING FOR HDTV

In this paper, we examine the subjective and objective performance of HDTV coded using the MPEG-2 video coding standard. Tests were conducte d on seven HDTV sequences selected to cover a broad range of program m aterials in terms of scene content, complexity, motion speed and direc tion. The selected material was digitized in 4:2:2 format with HDTV re solution and coded using the MPEG-2 Main Profile/High Level syntax. Fo rmal subjective assessment was performed by non-expert viewers on the sequences coded at a bit rate of 18 Mbits/s. Since MPEG-2 allows a gre at flexibility at the encoding end, we also examined the impact of var ious MPEG-2 encoding parameters on the quality of the reconstructed HD TV video sequences. The parameters include bit rate, the structure of picture organization, as well as temporal processing.