A method and apparatus for characteristic-based video processing include: in response to receiving a region of a picture of a video sequence, determining a characteristic in the region, the region being independent of other regions of the picture for video coding; determining a class associated with the region based on the characteristic, the class being selected from a plurality of classes; and encoding the region using a parameter set associated with the class, the parameter set being selected from a plurality of parameter sets for video coding at different quality levels.