Complexity scalable rate-distortion optimization for H.264/AVC

The H.264/AVC video coding standard encapsulates the most advanced video coding tools. The various techniques that lead to better coding efficiency of the coding standard also inevitably increase the complexity of the video encoder. Thus, real-time encoding of video streams with H.264 coding standard is a challenging task. If available computational resource does not allow the entire encoding process to be carried out in time, a complexity scalable technique that ensures a graceful degradation of coding performance will be a useful tool. This work proposes a singularly-parameterized complexity scalable rate-distortion framework for H.264/AVC encoders.