Patent ID: 8175149

Claim:
An apparatus for controlling a bit-rate comprising: a processor and a memory, the memory having stored thereon: an MCTF (motion compensated temporal filtering) unit in which each unit of GOP (group of pictures) is subject to K MCTF operations with respect to temporal stages in an input scalable layer, where K in an integer greater than 1; a bit allocation unit which allocates bits to respective frames based on K temporal stages, frame types created for the respective K temporal stages, and frame complexities, wherein, in the bit allocation unit, a bit amount allocated to each frame has limited minimum and maximum values based on an order of the respective frames in a coding process in an unit of the GOP, and wherein a bit allocation of a previous frame having a limited minimum and maximum value determines a bit allocation of a next frame having a limited minimum and maximum value according to the order of the coding process in the unit of the GOP, and wherein the frame complexities are configured based on a number of bits per pixel within each frame; and an adaptive quantization parameter (QP) adjusting unit which determines a QP in a unit of a macro block according to a difference between a bit amount, which is created when a macro block of each frame is actually coded, and a bit amount allocated to the macro block in each frame based on a bit amount that is allocated to each frame and according to the number of bits per pixel within each frame, and wherein the number of bits per pixel within each frame decreases each time the integer value of the K increases by a factor of 1.