Influence of bit depth on subjective video quality assessment for high resolutions

Abstract

This paper deals with the influence of bit depth on the subjective video quality assessment. To achieve this goal, eight video sequences, each representing a different content prototype, were analysed. Subjective evaluation was performed using the ACR method. The analysed video sequences were encoded to 8 and 10-bit bit depth. Two most used compression standards H.264 and H.265 were evaluated with 1, 3, 5, 10 and 15 Mbps bitrate in Full HD and UHD resolution. Finally, the perceived quality of both compression standards using the subjective tests with emphasis on bit-depth was compared. From the results we can state, that the practical application of 10-bit bit depth is not appropriate for Full HD resolution in the range of bitrate from 1 to 15 Mbps, for Ultra HD resolution, it is appropriate only for videos encoded by H.265/HEVC compression standard.