Target bit matching for MPEG-2 video rate control

The MPEG-2 Test Model 5 (TM5) algorithm is widely used for bit rate control. In TM5, however, the target number of bits and the number of actual coding bits for each picture do not match well. Therefore, degradation of the picture quality and buffer overflow may occur at the end of the GOP. We propose a new bit rate control algorithm based on accurate bit estimation. The main idea of the proposed algorithm is to determine the quantization parameters that generate the number of actual coding bits close to the target number of bits for each picture, while maintaining a uniform picture quality. The proposed algorithm uses the relationship between the number actual coding bits and the number of estimated bits of the previous macroblock