A parallel MPEG-2 video encoder with look-ahead rate control

We describe a parallel implementation of a MPEG-2 compliant, constant bit rate video encoder on a shared memory system. The emphasis is on techniques for obtaining compressed video with picture quality superior to that of commercially available real-time hardware encoders. We propose a novel scheme for bit allocation and rate control. The most remarkable aspect of this scheme is the analysis of future frames in order to determine bit allocation for the current frame. This analysis includes use of preliminary motion estimation, masking factor computation, and coding regions of future frames to model their coding complexity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first instance of an MPEG encoder which integrates a detailed analysis of future frames in the bit-allocation/rate-control mechanism