In some embodiments, macroblock-level encoding parameters are assigned to weighted Linear combinations of corresponding content-category-level encoding parameters. A macroblock quantization parameter (QP) modulation is set to a weighted linear combination of content category QP modulations. Content categories may identify potentially overlapping content types. The combination weights may be similarity measures describing macroblock similarities to content categories. A macroblock may be associated with multiple content categories, with different similarity levels for different content categories. A similarity measure for a given macroblock with respect to a content category may be defined as a number (between 0 and 8) of neighboring macroblocks that meet a similarity condition, provided the macroblock meets a qualification condition. The similarity condition may be computationally simpler than the qualification condition. Content-category-level statistics are generated by combining block-level statistics. Content-category-level statistics may be used in encoding subsequent frames.