A novel hybrid HVPC/mathematical model rate control for low bit-rate streaming video

Abstract To prevent the loss of the information embedded in the generated variable bit-rate data that is transmitted over a constant bit-rate channel, several methods were proposed in MPEG TMN5, H.263+ TMN5, and TMN8. In these methods, the quantity of coded data is controlled by adjusting the coding parameters according to the amount of data remaining in the buffer. Because this control is based on the past coded information and does not reflect the nature of the image being coded, there is no assurance that sufficient image quality will be obtained. In this paper, we present a new rate control scheme to control the encoder generated variable bit-rate data over a constant bit-rate channel for non-real-time streaming video applications. The proposed rate control integrates frame and block layer rate controls to regulate the bit-rate using the combination of feed-forward control, feed-backward control, and model-based approaches together with characteristics of human visual perception, smooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM). As a result, our proposed rate control method encodes the video sequence with higher encoded video quality compared to UBC (University of British Columbia) H263+ codec.