A novel rate control method for H.264 video coding

This paper proposes a H.264 rate control method considering picture characteristics and buffer constraints. Selecting the optimum buffer size corresponding to each application´s requirement gives better compression quality and functionality. However, conventional methods allocate the number of bits equally to each GOP and do not explicitly consider the buffer size, where picture quality might not be optimal and the buffer size is not optimally determined for applications. This paper provides a bit allocation method that reflects the picture characteristic of each frame while keeping the buffer transition compliant within a given size. In the proposed method, the number of bits to be generated is estimated from the complexity of each frame, and it is adjusted by a scaling coefficient newly introduced in this paper. Thus, the allocated number of bits reflects picture characteristics and fully complies with buffer constraints. Experimental results show that the proposed method improves picture quality and suppresses quality fluctuation.