A VBR rate control using MINMAX criterion for video streaming

Abstract

In this paper, we present a frame-level rate control scheme based on a modified linear Rate-Distortion model to achieve minimal maximum (MINMAX) distortion for frame-dependent quantizers. The MINMAX distortion measure is used because the worst visual quality often dominates the overall perceptual quality. In our approach, we first perform the iterative offline analysis of the rate-distortion behavior for the original sequences on a video server. Such compactly stored information enables the encoder to select quantization parameters in real-time during streaming process. Our results show that our algorithm obtains higher minimum PSNR values than the TM5 rate control while the average PSNR is similar. We also use the same technique to optimize statistical multiplexing for a multi-channel transmission application.