System and method for the dynamic resolution change for video encoding

A method for predictively encoding digital video sequences, comprising:

• dynamically determining the resolution of a current frame being encoded and outputting the determination, the selection being based on statistical and coding information of a plurality of frames, including at least one previous frame and the current frame;
• and,
• selecting encoding parameters and encoding a current frame at a chosen resolution, wherein the encoding parameter selection step takes into account the determination of the dynamic resolution selection step in determining the encoding parameters,
• wherein the statistical information includes scene-change information and estimated motion information, and the coding information includes a measure of the quantization used by the frames and a measure of the availability of bits, and,
• wherein the dynamic resolution is further based on functional conditions based on the statistical and coding information, on the basis of which the resolution selection is performed are different for a low-to-high resolution switch as compared to a high-to-low resolution switch, the method further comprising:
• determining if a low-to-high resolution switch being affected is given by the following condition, the switch being affected if the condition C2 evaluates to TRUE
• C2={Q.M2>TQM}AND{Bdec>TB2}AND{Fcurr−Fsc>Tsc}
• where Q is a measure of the quantization scales used to encode a plurality of previous frames, M is a measure of the motion present in a plurality of previous frames and the current frame, Bdec is a measure of the decoder buffer fullness, where Fcurr and Fsc are the frame numbers of the current frame and the last scene-change frame respectively and TQM, TB2 and TSC are preset thresholds.