Real-time videoconferencing using cellular devices provides natural communication to the Deaf community. Compressed American Sign Language video must be evaluated in terms of the intelligibility of the conversation and not in terms of the overall aesthetic quality of the video. This work studies the trade-offs between intelligibility and quality when varying the proportion of the rate allocated explicitly to the signer. An intelligibility distortion measure and a quality measure (PSNR) are applied in a rate-distortion optimization framework and a novel encoding technique controls the degree to which intelligibility is emphasized over quality. Understanding the relationship between intelligibility and quality allows the encoder to identify operating points that maximize PSNR while maintaining a minimal level of intelligibility. At fixed bitrates, PSNR can be increased on average by 5 dB with little penalty in intelligibility by providing a nominal amount of rate to the background region. Further increases in PSNR can be achieved at the price of reduced intelligibility.
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