An improved frame and macroblock layer bit allocation scheme for H.264 rate control

This paper proposes an improved frame and macroblock layer bit allocation scheme for H.264 rate control. Our improved algorithm has two main features: (a) a bit allocation method based on an improved complexity measure that uses a combination of mean absolute difference-based (MAD-based) measure and PSNR-based measure; and (b) a quantization parameter (QP) adjustment method and a better frame skipping decision method to improve overall visual quality and the accuracy of bit allocation. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm effectively alleviates visual quality degradation and variation caused by high motion or scene changes. Our method is effective especially for low bit rate video streaming.