Optimal rate adaptation with Integer Linear Programming in the scalable extension of H.264/AVC

Adaptation for scalable video is one of the recent challenges in video distribution over modern networks, which are heterogeneous both in terms of available bandwidth and user end terminal capability. Scalable Video Coding offers the possibility to adapt the content following the “quality layer” abstraction. In this work we present a new method to optimally define quality layers using Integer Linear Programming and distortion models. The performances of the proposed approach are comparable with the state-of-the-art methods, but they are obtained with strong complexity reduction and augmented flexibility.