Patent ID: 8681857

Claim:
A method for compensating macro-block (MB) level quantization reactivity to MB bits-used for a current encoding picture in a sequence of pictures, the method comprising: determining a picture complexity of a previous encoding picture on: bits used for the previous encoding picture in the sequence of pictures, and an output value from a first function of an average reference quantization step size given the average reference quantization step size for the previous encoding picture; predicting a reference picture quantization value for the current encoding picture based on; an output value from a second function of the picture complexity of the previous encoding picture and a number of target bits given the determined picture complexity of the previous encoding picture, and a number of target bits allocated for the current encoding picture, wherein the second function is an inverse of the first function; and producing final MB reference quantization values for each MB of the current encoding picture by combining the predicted reference picture quantization value and a reactive MB reference quantization value for the respective MB, wherein the reactive MB reference quantization value is determined based upon the respective MB rather than the previous encoding picture and can vary between MBs within the current encoding picture.