A rate control algorithm is presented for constrained variable bit rate (C_
VBR) encoding to make the compressed video stream more friendly to the user
network interface (UNI) than in free VER coding. Experiments show that the
algorithm would not only meet the delay constraint and traffic contract of
VER transfer so as to avoid the cell loss over UNI, bur also benefit the s
tatistical multiplexing by reducing the burstiness of the MPEG encoded stre
am.