Linear Rate Control and Optimum Statistical Multiplexing for H.264 Video Broadcast

Abstract

Abstract-The H.264 video coding standard achieves significantly improved video compression efficiency and finds important applications in digital video broadcast. To enable H.264 video encoding for digital TV broadcast and maximize its broadcast efficiency, there are two important issues that need to be adequately addressed. First, we need to understand the complex coding mechanism of an H.264 video encoder and develop a model to analyze and control its rate-distortion (R-D) behavior in an accurate and robust manner. Second, the R-D behaviors of individual channels in the broadcast system should be jointly controlled and optimized under bandwidth and buffer constraints so as to maximize the overall broadcast quality. In this paper, we develop a linear rate model and a linear rate control scheme for H.264 video coding. We develop an optimum statistical multiplexing system to allocate bits across video programs (each being encoded by an H.264 encoder) and video frames so that the overall video broadcast quality is maximized. We study the bandwidth and buffer constraints in video broadcast and formulate the optimum statistical multiplexing into a constrained mathematical optimization problem. Realizing that it is impossible to find a close-form solution for global optima, we propose a simple yet efficient algorithm to find a near-optimum solution for joint rate allocation under buffer constraints. Our extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed statistical multiplexing system achieves about 40-50% saving in bandwidth, provides a smooth video quality change across programs and frames, and maintains robust decoder buffer control.Index Terms-H.264 video coding, rate control, statistical multiplexing, optimum rate allocation, TV broadcast.

Efficient mobile multimedia streaming

“…The joint rate allocator collects scene complexities from decoders/coders, distributes available bandwidth among video streams, and instructs the coders to avoid overloading the broadcast network by controlling their encoding bit rates. There are several joint video coders proposed in the literature, e.g., [29,[57][58][59]. Commercial joint coders, such as [60], are also available in the market.…”

“…For example, several works, such as [29,[57][58][59]103], propose joint coder designs for popular video coding standards.…”

“…Tagliasacchi et al [57] and He and Wu [58] propose joint coders for H.264/AVC coders. Rezaei et al [29] also propose a joint coder for H.264/AVC using fuzzy logic, which achieves low end-to-end delay and uniform quality among video streams.…”

Allocation of IPTV streams over broadband wireless through fuzzy logic control

“…Alternatively, it is also possible to predict complexity prior to encoding [6], though this method apart from its complexity cannot be adapted to bitrate transcoding of pre-encoded video. Also for live encoders only, an alternative is to partially decode future frames, as occurs in [7]. Unfortunately in [7], only the temporal complexity measure is found by partial decoding, while spatial complexity is predicted from a previous frame.…”

“…Also for live encoders only, an alternative is to partially decode future frames, as occurs in [7]. Unfortunately in [7], only the temporal complexity measure is found by partial decoding, while spatial complexity is predicted from a previous frame. In our paper, for computational reasons, we adopt a simpler form of video complexity measure, which has the advantage that real-time operation is guaranteed.…”