# Hacking VMAF with Video Color and Contrast Distortion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04807 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04807/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 10 Jul 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Comparing the Robustness of Modern No-Reference Image- and Video-Quality Metrics to Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06958/) (2023)
- [Hacking VMAF and VMAF NEG: vulnerability to different preprocessing methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04510/) (2021)
- [Adversarial purification for no-reference image-quality metrics: applicability study and new methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06957/) (2024)
- [IOI: Invisible One-Iteration Adversarial Attack on No-Reference Image- and Video-Quality Metrics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05955/) (2024)
- [Objective video quality metrics application to video codecs comparisons: choosing the best for subjective quality estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10220/) (2021)
- [Stochastic BIQA: Median Randomized Smoothing for Certified Blind Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12575/) (2024)
- [Adaptive High-Frequency Preprocessing for Video Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08849/) (2025)
- [JND-Guided Light-Weight Neural Pre-Filter for Perceptual Image Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10648/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Video quality measurement takes an important role in many applications. Full-reference quality metrics which are usually used in video codecs comparisons are expected to reflect any changes in videos. In this article, we consider different color corrections of compressed videos which increase the values of full-reference metric VMAF and almost don't decrease other widely-used metric SSIM. The proposed video contrast enhancement approach shows the metric inapplicability in some cases for video codecs comparisons, as it may be used for cheating in the comparisons via tuning to improve this metric values.