Coding complexity is a crucial parameter in rate control scheme. Traditional measures for coding complexity are based on statistic and estimation. This way may cause the imprecise coding complexity and finally bring inaccurate output bit rate more or less. To resolve this problem, we propose a hypothetical virtual coding complexity to imitate the real coding complexity. Based on the proposed coding complexity measure, a novel rate control algorithm is proposed either. Experimental results and analysis show that the proposed mearsure for coding complexity is effective, and our scheme outperforms the JVT-W042 solution by providing more accurate QP prediction, reducing frame skipping, and improving visual quality.