ABSTRACT: The paper describes a simple global model of MPEG-2 video coders. This global
model is defined as a relation between the bitrate and the quantization parameter for individual
I-, P- and B-frames. The model has five parameters that depend on image content. Nevertheless
it is shown that four of them can be fixed in order to obtain simply one-parameter model which
can be used for encoder control. The experimental results are reported for some video test
sequences in the BT.601/4CIF format encoded by an MPEG-2 MP@ML coder.