Book excerpt: This book discusses in detail the basic algorithms of video compression that are widely used in modern video codec. The authors dissect complicated specifications and present material in a way that gets readers quickly up to speed by describing video compression algorithms succinctly, without going to the mathematical details and technical specifications. For accelerated learning, hybrid codec structure, inter- and intra- prediction techniques in MPEG-4, H.264/AVC, and HEVC are discussed together. In addition, the latest research in the fast encoder design for the HEVC and H.264/AVC is also included.