Frame-level ρ-domain R-D optimization in H.264

The frame-level R-D optimization in H.264 is very important in video storage scenarios. Among all of the sub-optimal algorithms, a greedy iteration algorithm (GIA) can best lower the computational complexity of frame-level R-D optimization. In order to further lower the computational complexity, a p-domain frame-level R-D optimization algorithm is proposed in this letter. Different from GIA, every frame's rate and distortion can be estimated accurately without actual encoding in our proposed algorithm. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm can lower the computational complexity greatly with negligible variation in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) compared with GIA.