vidtas

Vidtas is a theoretical unit used to quantify the perceptual value of audiovisual content in digital media. It is defined as the amount of perceptually relevant information conveyed per second of video, integrating spatial, temporal, color, and motion cues into a single scalar measure. The concept emerged in information science and cognitive perception discussions as a way to bridge objective bitrate metrics with human viewing experience.

Concept and measurement: A vidta can be computed by applying a perceptual model to a video sequence, assigning weights to features such as edge detail, motion continuity, chrominance complexity, and temporal changes. The resulting score is intended to reflect how much meaningful content a viewer would retain under a given viewing condition. Vidtas can be aggregated over frames to yield an overall per-second or per-file value, enabling comparisons across codecs, resolutions, and bitrates.

Applications and reception: In research and industry, vidtas have been proposed as a complementary metric to traditional quality indicators like PSNR, SSIM, and VMAF. They are used to benchmark codec efficiency, streaming adaptability, and content tagging. However, there is no universal standard, and different perceptual models can produce divergent results, limiting cross-project comparability.

Limitations: The measurement depends on models of human perception, display characteristics, and viewing tasks. As a result, vidta values are context-dependent and best used alongside other objective and subjective assessments.

See also: Perceptual video quality, VMAF, SSIM, bitrate, video compression.