Scene adaptive rate control in a distributed parallel MPEG video encoder

Software-only MPEG video compression is flexible and usually cost-effective way to generate high quality MPEG video streams. Because the encoding rate is low on general purpose processors, a parallel encoder running on a network of workstations is an attractive platform for speeding up the computation. Constant bit rate encoding and scene change handling are, however, challenging jobs in such distributed implementations. First we present a simple but effective scene change handling algorithm in which the computational load imposed by cut detection is shared among the resources. An important aspect is that our method does not increase the communication overhead in the system. Then, a two-pass bit allocation and rate control algorithm is described, which guarantees the VBV compliance of the bit streams