SSIM-Based Perceptual Rate Control for Video Coding

• Published in: IEEE transactions on circuits and systems for video technology Vol. 21; no. 5; pp. 682 - 691
• Main Authors: Tao-Sheng Ou, Yi-Hsin Huang, Chen, Homer H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.05.2011; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Adaptation model; Allocations; Applied sciences; Bit rate; Coding; Computer programs; Encoding; Exact sciences and technology; H.264/AVC; Human; Humans; Image processing; Indexes; Information, signal and communications theory; Optimization; optimum bit allocation; rate control; Rate-distortion; rate-distortion optimization; Reduction; Signal processing; Similarity; Software; structural similarity index; Systems, networks and services of telecommunications; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Teletraffic; Transmission and modulation (techniques and equipments); Video coding; Similarity; Flow rate regulation; Rate distortion theory; optimum bit allocation; Information rate; Teletraffic; H.264/AVC; Modeling; Information transmission; structural similarity index; Subjective evaluation; Optimization; Video signal processing; Mean square error; rate-distortion optimization; Bit allocation; Traffic management; Quality control; Traffic control; Software; rate control
• ISSN: 1051-8215; 1558-2205
• DOI: 10.1109/TCSVT.2011.2129890

The quality of video is ultimately judged by human eye; however, mean squared error and the like that have been used as quality metrics are poorly correlated with human perception. Although the characteristics of human visual system have been incorporated into perceptual-based rate control, most existing schemes do not take rate-distortion optimization into consideration. In this paper, we use the structural similarity index as the quality metric for rate-distortion modeling and develop an optimum bit allocation and rate control scheme for video coding. This scheme achieves up to 25% bit-rate reduction over the JM reference software of H.264. Under the rate-distortion optimization framework, the proposed scheme can be easily integrated with the perceptual-based mode decision scheme. The overall bit-rate reduction may reach as high as 32% over the JM reference software.