Rate-Distortion Cost Estimation for H.264/AVC

Rate-distortion cost estimation is useful for many H.264/advanced video coding (AVC) applications including rate-distortion optimization (RDO) for mode-decision and rate-control. In this paper, we propose a new rate-prediction model and an adaptive algorithm to provide more accurate estimation of the number of coding bits for encoding intra and inter-blocks compared to previously proposed methods. The rate estimation is modeled by a linear combination of existing coding parameters, which are more accurately related to entropy coding and transform coefficients. Based on the proposed model, a cost estimation function is also proposed to give a more accurate rate-distortion cost estimation. Furthermore, we propose a block classification approach to further improve the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The proposed schemes can achieve better results in estimating the bit-rate and rate-distortion cost compared to previously proposed approaches.