A Low Complexity Rate Control Algorithm for Portable Applications

Rate control algorithm is one of important factors influencing the coding performance. In this paper, a low complexity rate control (LCRC) method is proposed. Instead of using RQ model and MAD model, LCRC determine the QP for P frames according to the allocated bits for current frame and the encoded bits of previous frame. Moreover, LCRC exploits a simple model to improve the initial QP determination. Also, considering the trade-off between similar reconstructed image quality and the fast constringency, some rate control parameters are changed in LCRC, including limitation of GOP´s QP variation range. Five sequences are coded at different bit rate to verify the proposed method. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed method outperforms the method using in reference software, which can achieve better performance in terms of increasing coding quality, depressing quality fluctuations and reducing buffer overflow/underflow.