1. A method of transforming video data, the method comprising: receiving, by a programmable processing unit of a transform engine, control data indicating characteristics of the video data; generating, by the programmable processing unit of the transform engine, based on the control data, an operational code associated with a task, the operational code including a plurality of operational code fields, each respective operational code field of the plurality of operational code fields having a respective operational code field value in a plurality of operational code field values, wherein generating the operational code comprises: setting, based on the control data, a plurality of control parameters; and setting the operational code field values of the operational code based on a predetermined assignment of the control parameters to the operational code field values; storing, by the programmable processing unit of the transform engine, the operational code in a memory; and when a time has arrived for executing the task: reading, by the programmable processing unit of the transform engine, the operational code from the memory; for each respective control parameter of the plurality of control parameters, determining, by the programmable processing unit of the transform engine, the respective control parameter from a respective operational code field value in the operational code, wherein each respective control parameter of the plurality of control parameters indicates a respective characteristic of the video data; and performing, by a fixed-function hardware unit of the transform engine, a transformation operation based on the determined control parameters to transform coefficients from a frequency domain to pixel difference values in a spatial domain, the fixed-function hardware unit comprising at least one item that transforms the video data selected from among: an application-specific integrated circuit, an arithmetic logic unit, and a multiply-accumulate unit, and wherein the plurality of operational code fields are changeable to accommodate a plurality of video coding standards without changing any hardware of the transform engine.