A novel method of minimizing video quality variation is proposed for a real-time frame-layer rate control algorithm with a transmission buffer. The proposed rate control method uses a non-iterative optimization method for low computational complexity, and performs bit allocation at the frame level to minimize variation in distortion between frames. In order to reflect the buffer status, we use well-known PID control method. Computational complexity of PID control is very low, so the proposed algorithm is suitable for real-time low-complexity video encoder. Experimental results indicate that the proposed control method provides better PSNR performance than the existing rate control method.