Patent ID: 7844002

Claim:
A system for real-time multi-pass encoding of a sequence of video frames comprising: an input buffer implementing a look ahead window; a first video encoder device; a second video encoder device; an information processing device; a means for calculating a sufficient look ahead window for determining a size of said input buffer and correlating said size to a processing delay; a means for simultaneously feeding, in real-time, a sequence of incoming video frames to said input buffer and first video encoder device; said information processing device continuously collecting information, in real time, on the statistics and rate-quality characteristics of a sequence of input video frames within said look ahead window from an output of said first video encoder device; said information processing device further jointly determining an optimal target bit allocation of all frames in the look ahead window based on information collected from said first encoder device and the available bit budget for said all frames in said look ahead window; means for instructing said second video encoder device to encode said incoming frames according to said jointly determined target bit allocation, said second video encoder for encoding the incoming sequence of frames according to coding instructions, means for continuously updating the said look ahead window by removing the current frame encoded to said second encoder device with a next frame from said sequence and by repeating of said look ahead window calculating through said second encoder device encoding, wherein said input buffer means implements said correlated processing time delay of time such that sufficient information may be collected from the output of said first video encoder device for deriving said jointly determined target bit allocation by said information processing device.