Patent ID: 8405773

Claim:
A video communication quality estimation apparatus which estimates quality associated with video communication of bidirectionally exchanging an audio medium and a video medium upon compositing the audio medium and the video medium between communication terminals connected via a network, characterized by comprising: a multi-modal quality estimation unit which estimates a multi-modal quality value as a quality evaluation value of a composite medium obtained by compositing an audio medium output from a communication terminal and a video medium output from the communication terminal on the basis of an audio medium quality evaluation value as a quality evaluation value of the audio medium and a video medium quality evaluation value as a quality evaluation value of the video medium; a delay quality degradation amount estimation unit which estimates a delay quality degradation amount caused by an audio medium delay and a video medium delay on the basis of an audio delay time as a delay time from input of the audio medium to output of the audio medium between communication terminals and a video delay time as a delay time from input of the video medium to output of the video medium between the communication terminals; and a video communication quality estimation unit which estimates quality of the video communication on the basis of the multi-modal quality value estimated by said multi-modal quality estimation unit and the delay quality degradation amount estimated by said delay quality degradation amount estimation unit, characterized in that said delay quality degradation amount estimation unit includes: a storage unit which stores, in advance, a delay quality degradation amount estimation model representing a relationship between an audio delay time, a video delay time, and a delay quality degradation amount, and a delay quality degradation amount calculation unit which calculates a delay quality degradation amount corresponding to the audio delay time and the video delay time on the basis of the delay quality degradation amount estimation model, characterized in that the delay quality degradation amount estimation unit has a convex characteristic that when the audio delay time is constant, the delay quality degradation amount monotonically increases and reaches a predetermined maximum value with an increase in the video delay time, and monotonically decreases with a further increase in the video delay time, and a convex characteristic that when the video delay time is constant, the delay quality degradation amount monotonically increases and reaches a predetermined maximum value with an increase in the audio delay time, and monotonically decreases with a further increase in the audio delay time.