Incremental rate control for H.264 AVC scalable extension
The emerging H.264 Scalable Video Coding (H.264/SVC) requires the rate control algorithm to regulate the output bit rate of all the coarse-grain-scalability, temporal, spatial and combined enhancement layers. In order to address this topic, in this research, we propose an incremental rate control algorithm for H.264/SVC to control each layers encoding rate close to the target bit rate. The proposed algorithm introduces a number of efficient methods. First, based on our previous work on H.264/AVC rate control, a Rate-Complexity-Quantization (R-C-Q) model is extended in scalable video coding. Second, a complexity measure for Intra-frames based on their gradient and histogram information is used to precisely determine Quantization Parameters (QPs) for Intra-frames using the R-C-Q model. Third, we adopt an incremental approach to compute QPs of inter-frames. Fourth, a Proportional + Integral + Derivative (PID) buffer controller is presented to provide robust buffer control for each layer of H.264/SVC bitstream. Finally the QPs for hierarchical B-frames are adaptively decided by their neighbor inter-frames. Our extensive simulation results demonstrate that, our algorithm outperforms JVT-W043 rate control algorithm, adopted in the H.264/SVC reference software, by providing more accurate output bit rate for each layer, maintaining stable buffer fullness, reducing frame skipping finally, improving the overall coding quality.
rate control quantization parameter scalable video coding (svc) h.264 compression standard