TABLE OF CONTENTS Like the JPEG International Standard for still image compression, there have been several international video coding standards which are now in wide use today. There are a number of excellent texts on these standards, for example [1]. However, for continuity we provide a brief outline of the developments here, in order to provide a background and basis for comparision. Wavelet-based video coding is in many ways still a nascent subject, unlike the wavelet still coding field which is now maturing. Nevertheless, wavelet coding approaches offer a number of desirable features that make them very attractive, such as natural scalability in resolution and rate using the pyramidal structure, along with full embeddedness and perhaps even error-resiliency in certain formulations. In terms of achieving international standard status, the first insertion of wavelets could likely be in the still image coding arena (e.g., JPEG2000); this could then fuel an eventual wavelet standard for video coding. But substantial research remains to be conducted to perfect this line of coding to reach that insertion point.
We note that all the video coding standards we discuss here have associated audio coding standards as...
