Model-based optimal rate control algorithm for real-time hybrid video encoder

This paper presents a frame level optimal rate control scheme based on the proposed rate and distortion functions. A linear rate-quantizer model and a linear distortion-quantizer model are proposed to perform rate-distortion optimization. The coefficients of rate distortion models are estimated by linear regression with the past rate distortion characteristics. We propose the two-stage strategy for rate-distortion optimization. First we use Lagrange multiplier optimization approach to obtain the closed-form solution based on our rate distortion models. Then we take the inter-frame dependency into account to further adjust bit rate allocation. We apply our optimal rate control algorithm to H.264, and the proposed algorithm outperforms JVT-G012 rate control scheme in terms of average PSNR.