Block-layer bit allocation for quality constrained video encoding based on constant perceptual quality

In lossy image/video encoding, there is a compromise between the number of bits (rate) and the extent of distortion. Bits need to be properly allocated to different sources, such as frames and macro blocks (MBs). Since the human eyes are more sensitive to the difference than the absolute value of signals, the MINMAX criterion suggests to minimizing the maximum distortion of the sources to limit quality fluctuation. There are many works aimed to such constant quality encoding, however, almost all of them focus on the frame layer bit allocation, and use PSNR as the quality index. We suggest that the bit allocation for MBs should also be constrained in the constant quality, and furthermore, perceptual quality indices should be used instead of PSNR. Based on this idea, we propose a multi-pass block-layer bit allocation scheme for quality constrained encoding. The experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve much better encoding performance. Keywords: Bit allocation, block-layer, perceptual quality, constant quality, quality constrained