A metric representing the sum of variances for pixel blocks of a region of an image are used to identify the presence a video feature of the image, and a transcoding is performed responsive to identifying the presence of the video feature. The identified video feature can include, but is not limited to, a scene change, the presence of a black border region or a caption region, or the complexity of the image. The transcoding operation can include, but is not limited to, coding the image as an Intra-frame, omitting the content corresponding to the black border region or the caption region from the transcoded image or allocating a relatively lower bit budget for the black border region or a relatively higher bit budget to the caption region during transcoding of the image, or setting the bit budget for rate control during transcoding.