Selection of Initial Quantisation Parameter for Rate Controlled 1.264 video coding

Rate control (RC) is one of the most important mechanisms affecting digital video quality in networked environments. One of the main parameters for RC in the context of the H.264 video coding standard is the quantisation parameter (QP), which jointly affects quality and rate on a frame by frame basis. In this paper, a scheme is proposed for achieving more accurate initial starting QPs for video sequences/groups of sequences, after performing binary search. The scheme shows computational speed-ups, as well as improvements in terms of retaining more constant quality, reduced bit rate fluctuations and less dropped frames for a variety of tested video sequences