Patent ID: 7768937

Claim:
A method of estimating a quality of a stream of frames of video data wherein said video data is transmitted via a packet switched telecommunications network, and wherein each frame of video data is encoded such that it is represented by one or more packets, each packet having a payload, the method comprising the steps of: receiving, by a quality assessment system coupled to said packet switched telecommunications network, a sequence of packets associated with the stream of frames of video data; responsive to receiving said sequence of packets associated with the stream of frames of video data, extracting, by said quality assessment system, a set of parameters from said sequence of packets, and wherein said set of parameters includes a first video quality parameter and a second video quality parameter; and responsive to extracting said set of parameters from said sequence of packets, generating, by said quality system, an estimated mean opinion score based upon said set of parameters; wherein the generating step further comprises the steps of: generating, by said quality assessment system, said first video quality parameter for each group of packets associated with a particular frame of video data based upon a determined frame duration of the particular frame of video data in the stream of video data; and generating, by said quality assessment system, said second video quality parameter for each of said group of packets in dependence upon the size of encoded data comprising the particular frame of said video data, wherein each packet associated with a particular frame of video data contains a timestamp relating to a temporal position of the particular frame within the stream of video data and in which the first video parameter is generated in dependence upon the difference between the timestamp of a group of packets in a sequence of such groups and the timestamp of a previous group in said sequence of packets associated with the stream of frames of video data.