On enhancing H.264/AVC video rate control by PSNR-based frame complexity estimation

In this paper, we present a PSNR-based frame complexity estimation to improve H.264/AVC rate control. Our scheme is based on adding PSNR-based complexity estimation to the existing mean absolute difference based (MAD-based) complexity measure to form s combined frame complexity estimation. The aim is to allocate bits more accurately, especially for frames with scene changes and high motions. Bit allocation to each frame is not just computed by encoder buffer status but also by a combined frame complexity measure. The quadratic rate-quantization (R-Q) model is used to determine the quantization parameter (QP) for each frame and the computed QP is further adjusted in two special cases. We also propose a frame skipping decision scheme to improve the performance at high frame rates. Simulation results show that the H.264 coder, using our proposed scheme, achieves better visual performances with similar or smaller PSNR deviations when compared to that of the recent JMS.6 rate control.