Methods of encoding and decoding video are described. The methods for encoding and decoding a picture partitioned into blocks include determining an activity rank for a block, based on a block size of the block and an intra-coding mode for the block; calculating a normalization value based on the activity rank divided by an average activity rank determined over a plurality of previously-encoded/decoded blocks; and quantizing/dequantizing a set of transform domain coefficients for the block using a quantization step size adjusted by the normalization value.