The influence of camera shakes, harmful occlusions and camera misalignment on the perceived quality in user generated video

Abstract

Video sharing sites such as Youtube are prominent examples for the increasing demand of private camera owners to record, save and share their real life experiences as videos. Whereas professional video productions use advanced camera equipment in a controlled environment with skilled cameramen, User-Generated Video (UGV) differs significantly in regard of equipment, skill and thus in video quality. In this work we focus on a detailed analysis of the effects of camera shakes, harmful occlusions as well as a possible misalignment between the recording camera and the scene, on the resulting video quality. In contrast, most of the video quality discussion in the literature has focused on encoding artifacts and other compression problems. Our data was systematically gathered using large crowdsourcing experiments over three genres of video, and it was validated in a controlled lab setting. Our results show that even minimal camera shaking as well as occlusions lead to a significant reduction in the perceived video quality.