A new edge-based complexity measure for intra-rate estimation in H.264/AVC

An efficient I-frame R-Q model is still needed by the rate control in the latest H.264/AVC video coding standard. Some recent works introduced the gradient-based image complexity measure into the frame-layer intra rate estimation in H.264/AVC, but the issue at the macroblock layer was not discussed. We propose a new edge-based complexity measure for this bit rate estimation problem at both the frame-layer and the macroblock-layer. The LOG operator is used in the edge extraction and an adaptive threshold selection method is proposed. The experiments show that the proposed edge-based measure has a good linear relation with the intra frame bit rate.