Rate control algorithm for DSP-based video coding

Since there has been a growing demand of DSP-based video coders and most existing rate control methods don't suit them well because of their high time complexity, this paper proposes an improved rate control algorithm to deal with the problem. Based on the analysis of the specialties of those coders, the proposed algorithm includes rate control in three levels: selects the encoding frames, allocates suitable bits and decides the quantization parameter (QP) for each slice, and updates buffer state in real-time to make sure no overflow or underflow. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has much lower time complexity than the rate control algorithm in x.264, while promising the reconstructed picture quality and meeting the bandwidth constrains.