A VBR rate control algorithm for MPEG-2 video coders with perceptually adaptive quantisation and traffic shaping

This paper describes a variable bit-rate (VBR) rate control algorithm for the MPEG-2 video coder. The algorithm described uses perceptually adaptive quantisation by varying the quantiser step-size of the coder according to the spatial correlation, temporal correlation and a prediction of the quantisation distortion of each macroblock. The algorithm also shapes the traffic characteristics of the output bit-stream of the coder by varying the quantiser step-size to ensure that the traffic statistics of the output bit-rate of the coder comply with a predetermined traffic descriptor. The results presented show that there exists a perceptually optimum set of traffic statistics which provide a consistent perceived decoded image quality for a given probability of cell loss. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.