DACE: Dynamic Adaptive Complexity Encoding for Real Time Communication on Heterogeneous Devices

DACE is a novel algorithm to improve real-time video quality by dynamically adjusting the complexity of the encoding to maximize resource utilization. It uniquely adapts the feedback control logic from network congestion algorithms such as RENO, using prior frame encoding time to select the highest sustainable complexity for the next frame. A saturation mechanism prevents stalls by throttling complexity as it approaches the time budget. Our evaluation using the x264 encoder shows significant SSIM gains across diverse content, demonstrating DACE's effectiveness in converting available computational power into improved visual fidelity on heterogeneous devices.