Machine Perceptual Quality: Evaluating the Impact of Severe Lossy Compression on Audio and Image Models

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Main Authors: Jacobellis, Dan, Cummings, Daniel, Yadwadkar, Neeraja J.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Jacobellis, Dan
Cummings, Daniel
Yadwadkar, Neeraja J.
author_facet Jacobellis, Dan
Cummings, Daniel
Yadwadkar, Neeraja J.
contents In the field of neural data compression, the prevailing focus has been on optimizing algorithms for either classical distortion metrics, such as PSNR or SSIM, or human perceptual quality. With increasing amounts of data consumed by machines rather than humans, a new paradigm of machine-oriented compression$\unicode{x2013}$which prioritizes the retention of features salient for machine perception over traditional human-centric criteria$\unicode{x2013}$has emerged, creating several new challenges to the development, evaluation, and deployment of systems utilizing lossy compression. In particular, it is unclear how different approaches to lossy compression will affect the performance of downstream machine perception tasks. To address this under-explored area, we evaluate various perception models$\unicode{x2013}$including image classification, image segmentation, speech recognition, and music source separation$\unicode{x2013}$under severe lossy compression. We utilize several popular codecs spanning conventional, neural, and generative compression architectures. Our results indicate three key findings: (1) using generative compression, it is feasible to leverage highly compressed data while incurring a negligible impact on machine perceptual quality; (2) machine perceptual quality correlates strongly with deep similarity metrics, indicating a crucial role of these metrics in the development of machine-oriented codecs; and (3) using lossy compressed datasets, (e.g. ImageNet) for pre-training can lead to counter-intuitive scenarios where lossy compression increases machine perceptual quality rather than degrading it. To encourage engagement on this growing area of research, our code and experiments are available at: https://github.com/danjacobellis/MPQ.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_07957
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Machine Perceptual Quality: Evaluating the Impact of Severe Lossy Compression on Audio and Image Models
Jacobellis, Dan
Cummings, Daniel
Yadwadkar, Neeraja J.
Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Sound
Audio and Speech Processing
In the field of neural data compression, the prevailing focus has been on optimizing algorithms for either classical distortion metrics, such as PSNR or SSIM, or human perceptual quality. With increasing amounts of data consumed by machines rather than humans, a new paradigm of machine-oriented compression$\unicode{x2013}$which prioritizes the retention of features salient for machine perception over traditional human-centric criteria$\unicode{x2013}$has emerged, creating several new challenges to the development, evaluation, and deployment of systems utilizing lossy compression. In particular, it is unclear how different approaches to lossy compression will affect the performance of downstream machine perception tasks. To address this under-explored area, we evaluate various perception models$\unicode{x2013}$including image classification, image segmentation, speech recognition, and music source separation$\unicode{x2013}$under severe lossy compression. We utilize several popular codecs spanning conventional, neural, and generative compression architectures. Our results indicate three key findings: (1) using generative compression, it is feasible to leverage highly compressed data while incurring a negligible impact on machine perceptual quality; (2) machine perceptual quality correlates strongly with deep similarity metrics, indicating a crucial role of these metrics in the development of machine-oriented codecs; and (3) using lossy compressed datasets, (e.g. ImageNet) for pre-training can lead to counter-intuitive scenarios where lossy compression increases machine perceptual quality rather than degrading it. To encourage engagement on this growing area of research, our code and experiments are available at: https://github.com/danjacobellis/MPQ.
title Machine Perceptual Quality: Evaluating the Impact of Severe Lossy Compression on Audio and Image Models
topic Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Sound
Audio and Speech Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.07957