Low-delay window-based rate control scheme for video quality optimization in video encoder

The consistent video quality and encoding latency due to buffering are two important aspects in designing rate control scheme for the application of real-time video coding system. To well balance these two contrary objectives, we firstly analyze the constraint of buffer latency and the definition of a “consistent” video quality. Then a window-based rate control scheme is proposed with one window for controlling the rate and latency, while the other window for optimizing video quality. By applying low complexity frame level ratedistortion model in the testing sequences, our proposed method shows excellent performance in balancing the encoder buffer latency and optimized video quality. Besides, this one-pass rate control scheme is highly practical for the real-time video coding application.