An improved rate control scheme for H.264 using bit-count indicator

Rate control is one of essential techniques in video coding in order to ensure quality of pictures under constraint condition of bandwidth. The rate control algorithm consists of three components: group of pictures (GOP) level rate control, frame level rate control and basic unit level rate control. In this paper, the rate control algorithm at frame level and basic unit level is studied to improve effectiveness. In particular, the paper concentrates on estimating the number of coding bits or bit-count of the current frame and using bit-count as a complexity indicator when computing target bit for the current frame. Results show that the proposed method achieves improvements in estimating target bit for frames and increasing video quality compared to the previous method using MAD as the complexity indicator.