Incremental rate control for H.264/AVC video compression

In this study, the authors propose a new rate-complexity-quantisation model and an incremental rate control algorithm for H.264/AVC video coding. One unique property of this algorithm is that, the picture complexity estimation and rate-quantisation modelling are jointly designed with an incremental rate control for P-frames. In addition, the proposed algorithm also introduces a number of efficient rate control techniques, including accurate rate control for intra-frames, enhanced proportional–integral–derivative (PID) buffer controller, and adaptive quantisation parameter determination for B-frames. The proposed algorithm has low computational complexity while providing robust rate control. Our extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the current rate control algorithm adopted in the H.264/AVC reference software JM13.2 by achieving more accurate rate control, reducing frame skipping, depressing quality fluctuation and improving the overall coding quality by up to 2.83 dB.