QP initialization and adaptive MAD prediction for rate control in HEVC-based multi-view video coding

Rate control is an important component of an end-to-end video communication system. Although rate control is not a part of a video coding standard, it is necessary for practical deployment. Currently, there are several proposals for rate control in the upcoming High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, but there is no rate control scheme for HEVC-based multi-view extension. In this paper, we apply the newly recommended R-λ model-based HEVC rate control to the multi-view scenario, and propose two improvements. One improvement deals with Quantization Parameter (QP) initialization, and the other deals with adaptive Mean Absolute Difference (MAD) prediction. Results demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed methods, the resulting reduced fluctuation of instantaneous bitrate, as well as an improvement in rate-distortion performance compared to the R-λ rate control alone.