Rate control for hierarchical B-frames in H.264/AVC

Hierarchical B-frames can bring high coding performance when introduced into H.264/AVC. However, the traditional rate control schemes can not work efficiently in such new coding framework. This article presents a rate control algorithm for hierarchical B-frames in H.264/AVC. Taking the feature of the dyadic hierarchical coding structure into consideration, the proposed algorithm includes group of pictures (GOP) layer, temporal layer and frame layer bits allocation. After frame layer bits allocation is complete, frame layer quantization parameters (QP) determination strategy is responsible for calculating the final QP. Experimental results show that compared with other rate control algorithms, the proposed one can improve the coding performance and reduce the mismatch of target bit rate and real bit rate.