Improved macroblock level rate control for the spatially scalable extension of H.264/AVC

An improved rate control algorithm, designed for scalable video coders incorporating interlayer prediction, is proposed. Firstly, a Rate Distortion (RD) model for interlayer prediction involving the spatial enhancement layers is devised. An optimised Mean Absolute Difference (MAD) prediction model for the spatial enhancement layers that considers both the MAD from the spatial base layer in the same frame and the MAD from the corresponding macroblock in previous frames is also proposed. Simulation results show that the resulting algorithm produces accurate rate control with an average bit rate error of less than 0.26%. Compared with the JVT-W043 default rate control algorithm of the JSVM, the proposed algorithm improves the average PSNR by up to 0.53 dB or reduces the bit rate by an average of 10.95%. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm can be combined with the existing rate control scheme for H.264/AVC, resulting in further improvements.