US Patent 7782939 Real time bit rate control system

A source model in combination with an interest structure is provided to generate a quantization value for use in encoding a video signal. The interest structure is generated from a region of interest manually identified by a user viewing the video on an interactive user display or automatically by a system which recognizes the regions of interest automatically. The region of interest in the video signal is encoded using a quantization value calculated from the interest structure in combination with the source model, and the region of interest is encoded at a higher resolution level than surrounding regions.