Method and apparatus for video compression using sequential frame cellular automata transforms

The present invention generally relates to the field of video data compression, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for video data compression which operates dynamical systems, such as cellular automata (CA). Digital video data is encoded by using the evolving states of cellular automata. The method involves performing a frame-by-frame encoding of a group of M frames. Each of the frames is transformed with transform basis functions derived from the evolving cellular automata. The ensuing transform coefficients are encoded using a sub-band-based embedded stream technique that places the most important coefficients at the top of a hierarchical storage/transmission. The embedded stream encoding of the ensuing transform coefficients achieves an automatic redundancy removal in the cellular automata frequency space. Compression of the M frames is achieved when the stream encoding/decoding is terminated after: 1) a stipulated maximum bit budget is reached, or 2) when a predefined maximum error rate is attained. An encoding method is provided for accelerating the transmission of video data through communications networks and storing the compressed data on digital storage media.