Rate control for video coding with slice type dependencies

Rate control is an integral part of a video coding system as it ensures the generation of compressed bit streams that satisfy bandwidth and buffering constraints. Traditional rate control algorithms maintain a rate control model for a single picture type that is applied on pictures of this type. The remaining pictures are allocated a quantization parameter with no consideration of bit rate constraints. Video sequences may be coded with complex prediction structures that affect coding requirements. In this paper, we improve rate control for I- and B-coded pictures, especially in the context of hierarchical coding. We also describe a new rate control paradigm for coding video sequences with multiple slice types that achieves the bit target for all pictures. Both contributions improve rate-distortion performance and rate control accuracy.