Method, rate controller, and system for preventing overflow and underflow of a decoder buffer

Abstract From the Canadian patent

The present invention is method, rate, controller and system for preventing over-, flow and underflow of a decoder buffer in a video compression system. First, a plurality of quantized video bits is received from an encoder (102). The plurality of quantized video bits correspond to a video frame type. Then a virtual buffer is created, in a rate controller, to model fullness of a decoder buffer, based on the quantized video bits to produce a virtual buffer fullness (104). A quantization stepsize estimate is finally determined, in a rate controller, based on at least a first predetermined target bit allocation the video frame type, and the virtual buffer fullness (106). The quantization …