Patent ID: 7197072

Claim:
A method for allocating bits in a video encoding process, the method comprising: receiving an indication for a group of pictures for encoding, wherein the indication includes a structure indicating picture types for the pictures in the group of pictures; comparing a picture in the group of pictures to a previous picture in the group of pictures, the picture having bits allocated thereto for encoding; determining from the comparison that a scene change has occurred in the group of pictures at the picture; determining whether the picture is a P-picture; and reallocating bits for encoding remaining pictures in the group of pictures in response to the determination that there has been a scene change at the picture and that the picture is a P-picture, wherein such reallocation occurs without changing the structure of picture types, and the reallocated bits are allocated to the P-picture with the scene change according to: T p ′ = max ⁢ { ( R ( 1 + ( N p - 1 ) ⁢ X p X i ⁢ K p + N b ⁢ X b X i ⁢ K b ) ) , ( bit_rate 8 · picture_rate ) } where T p′ corresponds to the reallocation bits for the P-picture, where R corresponds to a remaining number of bits reallocated to the group of pictures, where N p corresponds to a number of P-pictures remaining to be encoded in the group, where N b corresponds to a number of B-pictures remaining to be encoded in the group, where bit_rate corresponds to a constant bit rate at which data is transmitted in a data channel, where picture_rate corresponds to a rate at which pictures are presented, where X i , X p , and X b correspond to constant bit rate complexity estimators respectively for I-pictures, for P-pictures, and for B-pictures, and where K p and K b are values determined by quantization matrices used to encode the pictures.