QP initialization and interview 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. Currently, there are several proposals for rate control in the upcoming High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, but none specifically for the multi-view extension of the standard. In this paper, we apply one of the HEVC single-view rate control schemes to the multi-view scenario, and propose two improvements. One improvement deals with Quantization Parameter (QP) initialization, and the other deals with interview Mean Absolute Difference (MAD) prediction. Experimental results demonstrate increased accuracy of rate control, reduced fluctuation of instantaneous bitrate, as well as a reduction in PSNR degradation compared to the existing rate control algorithm.