EvalVid and Usage in a network simulator

EvalVid, written by Jirka Klaue is a framework and tool-set for evaluation of the quality of video transmitted over a real or simulated communication network. It is targeted for researchers who want to evaluate their network designs or setups in terms of user perceived video quality.

Besides measuring QoS parameters of the underlying network, like loss rates, delays, and jitter, standard video quality metrics like PSNR and SSIM and a subjective video quality evaluation metric of the received video are provided.

 Currently H.264, MPEG-4 and H.263 are supported. AAC support is also included, though the perceptual quality evaluation has to be done by external tools implementing dedicated metrics like PESQ or PEAQ.

EvalVid can be downloaded for the linux platform from http://www2.tkn.tu-berlin.de/research/evalvid/

EvalVid-2.7 for linux contains the following binary files:
eg
etmp4
hist
miv
mos
mp4trace
psnr
vsgen

We also require ffmpeg and MP4Box to be downloaded separately.
mp4box
ffmpeg

the whole package can be used to evaluate media over a simulated network using NS-2 or NS-3 in the following way:

 

To run it successfully we need the ffmpeg, mp4box, mp4trace, etmp4 and psnr.

ffmpeg:  ffmpeg is a very fast video and audio converter that can also grab from a live audio/video source. It can also convert between arbitrary sample rates and resize video on the fly with a high quality polyphase filter. Used to convert the .yuv format to a .m4v format.

mp4box: MP4Box  is  a multi-purpose command line tool to create and edit MPEG-4 Systems presentations and manipulate ISO-media files (MP4, 3GP, MOV). converts .m4v to a .mp4 file.

mp4trace: mp4trace generates the trace file which is got using the details like packetmode or frame mode or  protocol type, delay, etc. This trace file is sent over the simulated network.

etmp4: This is used to generate the received video file which would be probably corrupted where all the frames that were corrupted or lost would be deleted.

psnr: This calculates the peak signal to noise ratio between the two files (sent and received). Typical values for the PSNR in lossy image and video compression are between 30 and 50 dB, where higher is better. Acceptable values for wireless transmission quality loss are considered to be about 20 dB to 25 dB

References:
http://www2.tkn.tu-berlin.de/research/evalvid/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_signal-to-noise_ratio

Research in field done by:
Mr. Abhishek Thakur and team,
Department of CS & IS
BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad Campus,
India.