Systems, apparatuses, and methods for bit budgeting in video encode pre-analysis based on context and features are disclosed. A pre-encoder receives a video frame and evaluates each block of the frame for the presence of several contextual indicators. The contextual indicators can include memory colors, text, depth of field, and other specific objects. For each contextual indicator detected, a coefficient is generated and added with other coefficients to generate a final importance value for the block. The coefficients can be adjusted so that only a defined fraction of the picture is deemed important. The final importance value of the block is used to determine the bit budget for the block. The block bit budgets are provided to the encoder and used to influence the quantization parameters used for encoding the blocks.