Techniques for efficient coding of digital media data are presented. A resource controller component dynamically allocates computing resources between an estimator component and a coder component. The estimator component generates initial motion estimation of a raw video frame of a sequence, based on a previous raw video frame, in parallel with the coder component encoding the previous raw video frame to generate a reconstructed previous video frame. The coder component encodes the raw video frame based on the reconstructed previous video frame. The coder component can dynamically allocate initial subsets of bits for respective coding units of the raw video frame based on residual data identified from the initial motion estimation. After completing encoding of a specified number of coding units, the coder component can dynamically adjust bit assignments for remaining coding units of the raw video frame based on initial residual data and identified real residual data.