Patent ID: 6100931
Filing Date: 2000-08-08
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
A method for encoding input video data comprising the steps of encoding the input video data in first coding means and, substantially simultaneously therewith, delaying the input video data by delaying means and supplying the delayed output to second coding means, determining a target amount of code based on difficulty data indicative of the difficulty of the video data determined by the encoding in the first coding means, and utilizing the target amount of code when coding the video data from the delaying means by the second coding means, wherein the step of determining the target amount of code includes multiplying an average amount of bits allocated to L number of images by a ratio of the difficulty of the image to be coded to a sum of difficulties indicative of the difficulty of L number of images so as to determine the target amount of code each time an image is coded, and wherein the target bit amount of code Tj of a j-th image in a video sequence is represented by the following equation: ##EQU16## in which L represents the number of images for which difficulty data is measured in advance, Dj represents difficulty data of the j-th image, and Rj represents the average amount of bits allocated to a sequence of D images from the jth image.