Novel Rate-Quantization Model-Based Rate Control With Adaptive Initialization for Spatial Scalable Video Coding

A novel spatial-layer rate-control algorithm is proposed for scalable video coding (SVC). First, by analyzing the relationship among the best initial quantization parameter (Q_p), channel bandwidth, and the initial frames´ complexity measure, an adaptive Q_p-initialization model is introduced to determine the starting Q_p value for not only the base layer but also the spatial enhancement layers of SVC. Then, a two-stage Q_p-determination scheme is designed to improve the rate-control performance for the spatial-layer SVC with an efficient frame-complexity prediction method and an adaptive model-parameter update technique employed. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed Q_p -initialization scheme and the two-stage Q_p-determination algorithm. By comparison with two other benchmark rate-control algorithms, the proposed rate-control algorithm is able to control constrained bit rates accurately with better rate-distortion performance.