• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.32 no.9C
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• pp.849-860
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• 2007

Because the H.264/AVC standard adopts the variable length coding algorithm, the rate of encoded video bitstream fluctuates a lot as time flows, though its compression efficiency is superior to that of existing standards. When a video is transmitted in real-time over networks with fixed low-bandwidth, it is necessary to control the bit rate which is generated from encoder. Many existing rate control algorithms have been adopting the quadratic rate-distortion model which determines the target bits for each frame. We propose a new rate control algorithm for H.264/AVC video transmission over networks with fixed bandwidth. The proposed algorithm predicts quantization parameter adaptively to reduce video distortion using the quadratic rate-distortion model, which uses the target bit rate and the mean absolute difference for current frame considering pixel difference between macroblocks in the previous and the current frame. On video samples with high motion and scene change cases, experimental results show that (1) the proposed algorithm adapts the encoded bitstream to limited channel capacity, while existing algorithms abruptly excess the limit bit rate; (2) the proposed algorithm improves picture quality with $0.4{\sim}0.9dB$ in average.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.185-194
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• 2016

In this paper, a novel rate control scheme for low delay video coding of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is proposed. The proposed scheme is developed by considering a new temporal prediction structure of HEVC. In the proposed scheme, the relationship between bit rate and quantization step is exploited firstly to formulate an accurate quadratic rate-quantization (R-Q) model. Secondly, a method of determining the quantization parameters (QPs) for the first frames within a group of pictures is proposed. Thirdly, an accurate frame-level bit allocation method is proposed for HEVC. Finally, based on the proposed R-Q model and the target bit allocated for the frame, the QPs are predicted for coding tree units by using rate-distortion (R-D) optimization. We compare our scheme against that of three other state-of-the-art rate control schemes. Experimental results show that the proposed rate control scheme can increase the Bjøntegaard delta peak signal-to-noise ratio by 0.65 dB and 0.09 dB on average compared with the JCTVC-I0094 and JCTVC-M0036 schemes, respectively, both of which have been implemented in an HEVC test model encoder; furthermore, the proposed scheme achieves a similar R-D performance to Wang's scheme, as well as obtaining the smallest bit rate mismatch error of all the schemes.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.49 no.12
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• pp.201-208
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• 2012

In this paper, the hardware design of rate control for real-time video encoded is proposed. In the proposed method, a quadratic rate distortion model with high-computational complexity is not used when quantization parameter values are being decided. Instead, for low-computational complexity, average complexity weight values of frames are used to calculate QP. For high speed and low computational prediction, the MAD is predicted based on the coded basic unit, using spacial and temporal correlation in sequences. The rate control is designed with the hardware for fast QP decision. In the proposed method, a quadratic rate distortion model with high-computational complexity is not used when quantization parameter values are being decided. Instead, for low-computational complexity, average complexity weight values of frames are used to calculate QP. In addition, the rate control is designed with the hardware for fast QP decision. The execution cycle and gate count of the proposed architecture were reduced about 65% and 85% respectively compared with those of previous architecture. The proposed RC was implemented using Verilog HDL and synthesized with UMC $0.18{\mu}m$ standard cell library. The synthesis result shows that the gate count of the architecture is about 19.1k with 108MHz clock frequency.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.26-39
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• 2007

In recent years, rate control is an important technique in real time video communication applications using H.264/AVC. Many existing rate control algorithms employ the quadratic rate-distortion model, which is determine the target bits for each P frame. In this paper, a new rate control algorithm for transmission of H.264/AVC video bit stream through CBR(Constant Bit Rate) channel is proposed. The proposed algorithm predicts an adaptive QP(Quantization Parameter) for improving video distortion, due to high motion and abruptly scene change, which target bit rate and MAD(Mean of Absolute Difference) for current frame considering image complexity variance between previous and current frames. Additionally, it uses frame skip technique to maintain bit stream within a manageable range and protect buffer from overflow or underflow. Experimental results show that the proposed method gives a quality improvement of about 0.5dB when compared to previous rate control algorithm. Also our proposed algorithm encodes the video sequences with less frame skipping compared to the existing rate control for H.264/AVC.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.762-772
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• 2011

In this paper, a method of rate control for constant bitrate (CBR) coding of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is addressed. The existing rate control of H.264/AVC may not provide exact rate control in the case of hierarchical coding structure since it doesn't consider the characteristics of the hierarchical coding structure. It is expected that a rate control is added to the reference software called HM for CBR encoding in the near future. More accurate rate control may be required in a hierarchical structure of random access (RA) mode defined in the common test condition of HM. In this paper, we propose a method of rate control based on quadratic Rate-Distortion (R-D) model considering temporal layers and frame types in hierarchical coding structure for efficient rate control. In the consideration of the trade-off relationship between the bit fluctuation and the average PSNR, both of frame and coding unit (CU) are set as the basic unit of rate control. The performance of the proposed rate control method is verified by simulations along with the trade-off relationships for the both cases of basic unit.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.14-17
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• 2010

Following the proliferation of three-dimensional video contents and displays, many terrestrial broadcasting companies prepare for starting stereoscopic 3DTV service. In terrestrial stereoscopic broadcast, it is a difficult task to code and transmit two video sequences while sustaining as high quality as 2DTV broadcast attains due to the limited bandwidth defined by the existing digital TV standards such as ATSC. Thus, a terrestrial 3DTV broadcasting system with heterogeneous video coding systems is considered for terrestrial 3DTV broadcast where the left image and right images are based on MPEG-2 and H.264/AVC, respectively, in order to achieve both high quality broadcasting service and compatibility for the existing 2DTV viewers. Without significant change in the current terrestrial broadcasting systems, we propose a joint rate control scheme for stereoscopic 3DTV service. The proposed joint rate control scheme applies to the MPEG-2 encoder a quadratic rate-quantization model which is adopted in the H.264/AVC. Then the controller is designed for the sum of two bit streams to meet the bandwidth requirement of broadcasting standards while the sum of image distortions is minimized by adjusting quantization parameter computed from the proposed optimization scheme. Besides, we also consider a condition on quality difference between the left and right images in the optimization. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed bit rate control scheme outperforms the rate control method where each video coding standard uses its own bit rate control algorithm in terms of minimizing the mean image distortion as well as the mean value and the variation of absolute image quality differences.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.25 no.8B
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• pp.1424-1435
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• 2000

A bit-rate controller that can achieve a constant bit rate when coding object-based video sequences is an important part to achieve an adaptation to bit-rate constraints, desired video quality, distribution of bits among objects, relationship between texture and shape coding, and determination of frame skip or not. Therefore we design content-based bit rate controller which will be used for relevant bit-rate control. The implementation is an extension of MPEG-4 rate control algorithm which employs a quadratic rate-quantizer model. The importance of different objects in a video is analyzed and segmented into a number of VOPs which are adaptively bit-allocated using the object-based modelling. Some test sequences are observed by a number of non-experts and interests in each object are analysed. The initial total target bit-rate for all objects is obtained by using the proposed technique. Then the total target bits are jointly analyzed for preventing from overflow or underflow of the buffer fullness. The target bits are distributed to each object in view of its importance, not only of statistical analysis such as motion vector magnitude, size of object shape, and coding distortion of previous frame. The scheme is compared with the rate controller adopted by the MPEG-4 VM8 video coder by representing their statistics and performance.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.216-225
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• 2011

Following the proliferation of three-dimensional video contents and displays, many terrestrial broadcasting companies have been preparing for stereoscopic 3DTV service. In terrestrial stereoscopic broadcast, it is a difficult task to code and transmit two video sequences while sustaining as high quality as 2DTV broadcast due to the limited bandwidth defined by the existing digital TV standards such as ATSC. Thus, a terrestrial 3DTV broadcasting with a heterogeneous video codec system, where the left image and right images are based on MPEG-2 and H.264/AVC, respectively, is considered in order to achieve both high quality broadcasting service and compatibility for the existing 2DTV viewers. Without significant change in the current terrestrial broadcasting systems, we propose a joint rate control scheme for stereoscopic 3DTV service based on the heterogeneous dual codec systems. The proposed joint rate control scheme applies to the MPEG-2 encoder a quadratic rate-quantization model which is adopted in the H.264/AVC. Then the controller is designed for the sum of the left and right bitstreams to meet the bandwidth requirement of broadcasting standards while the sum of image distortions is minimized by adjusting quantization parameter obtained from the proposed optimization scheme. Besides, we consider a condition on maintaining quality difference between the left and right images around a desired level in the optimization in order to mitigate negative effects on human visual system. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed bit rate control scheme outperforms the rate control method where each video coding standard uses its own bit rate control algorithm independently in terms of the increase in PSNR by 2.02%, the decrease in the average absolute quality difference by 77.6% and the reduction in the variance of the quality difference by 74.38%.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.44 no.11
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• pp.127-136
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• 2007

An abrupt scene-change frame is one that is hardly correlated with the previous frames. In that case, because an intra-coded frame has less distortion than an inter-coded one, almost all macroblocks are encoded in intra mode. This breaks up the rate control flow and increases the number of bits used. Since the reference software for H.264 takes no special action for a scene-change frame, several studies have been conducted to solve the problem using the quadratic R-D model. However, since this model is more suitable for inter frames, the existing schemes are unsuitable for computing the QP of the scene-change intra frame. In this paper, an improved rate control scheme accounting for the characteristics of intra coding is proposed for scene-change frames. The proposed scheme was validated using 16 test sequences. The results showed that the proposed scheme performed better than the existing H.264 rate control schemes. The PSNR was improved by an average of 0.4-0.6 dB and a maximum of 1.1-1.6 dB. The PSNR fluctuation was also in proved by an average of 18.6 %.