ications, but also affects many system performance tance to many areas in engineering and the natural and tradeoffs. The design and selection of a video encoder perceptual sciences. Video engineering is quickly be- therefore is not based only on its ability to compress coming a largely digital discipline although analog TV information. Issues such as bit rate versus distortion transmission is still by far the mainstay around the world. criteria, algorithm complexity, transmission channel Digital transmission of television signals via satellites is characteristics, algorithm symmetry versus asymmetry, commonplace, and widespread HDTV terrestrial trans- video source statistics, fixed versus variable rate coding, mission began in 2000 and is targeted to become the and standards compatibility should be considered in default transmission standard in the United States by order to make good encoder design decisions. 2006. Video compression is an absolute requirement for The growth of digital video applications and technol- the growth and success for the low bandwidth trans- ogy in the last few years has been explosive, and video mission and storage of digital video signals. Video compression is playing a central role in this success. Yet, encoding is used wherever digital video communications, the video coding discipline is relatively young and storage, processing, acquisition, and reproduction occur. certainly will evolve and change significantly over the The transmission of high quality multimedia information next few years. For instance, perceptual based video over high speed computer networks is a central problem encoding research is still relatively young and promises to in the design of quality of services (QoS) for digital be able to significantly influence the future course of the transmission providers. The Motion Pictures Expert discipline. Research in video coding has great vitality and Group (MPEG) finalized four well known encoding the body of work is significant. It is apparent that this standards, MPEG-1,