Pyramid coding based rate control for variable bit rate video streaming

Abstract

Multi-pass encoding is preferred over single-pass encoding for applications such as television broadcasting and video on demand to obtain a consistent visual quality media. This study presents a novel pyramid coding based two-pass rate control scheme for variable bit rate video streaming. The proposed algorithm uses the statistics collected in the first pass to derive an optimal quantisation parameter for encoding the frames in the second pass. Simple linear estimation models are employed along with Gaussian filtering to update the frame quantisation parameter values in an adaptive manner, resulting in a smoother variation among these values and a better visual quality. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed rate control scheme exhibits a better performance in terms of the peak signal-to-noise ratio and consistent perceptual visual quality in comparison with the existing rate control scheme in the joint model reference software while achieving the target bit rate.