A Frame Layer Bit Allocation for H.264 Based on Frame Complexity

The new H.264/AVC video coding standard delivers a significantly better performance compared to previous standards, supporting higher quality video over lower bit rate channels. In H.264, as in all other video encoders, the rate control objective is to accomplish the best quality with the minimum rate, and this is achieved by allocating more bits to frames with higher complexity and fewer bits to low complexity frames. In this paper a new frame layer bit allocation scheme for H.264 is proposed. In the proposed method, in addition to the encoder buffer status, the decision to adjust the target bitrate is determined based on the frame complexity. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method not only meets the requested bitrate more closely than the reference model, but also generates up to 1.1 dB better quality at this lower rate and is up to 3% less complex than the H.264 JVT rate control method