The invention discloses a video coding code rate control method and belongs to the video coding technology field. The method comprises steps that the code rate information of a video is acquired; images within the target unit time are extracted from the video, and the target unit time refers to the unit time when a code rate is greater than a preset value; the images are filtered; the images after filtering are coded and are then packaged to be video files. Through the method, problems of over-long coding time consuming and increase of probability of video playing failure existing in a code rate control method in the prior art are solved, on one hand, code rate reduction processing on images with relatively large code rates is carried out, the coding consuming time is reduced, on the other hand, a problem of video playing failure caused by slice loss can be avoided, probability of video playing failure is substantially reduced, moreover, through code rate reduction processing on the images with the relatively large code rates, a video peak code rate is substantially reduced, and purposes of reducing video playing lag and improving video playing smoothness are realized.