The interest in very low bitrate video coding has increased considerab
ly with the creation of new services and applications requiring this c
lass of bitrates in their function. This paper aims in presenting the
current problems and requirements, as well as the efforts in very low
bitrate video coding. It also provides a number of solutions in order
to solve these problems and to fulfill desired requirements in very lo
w bitrate coding. The main emphasis was given to an approach called ''
second generation'' which has already shown its potential to efficient
ly code still images at higher compression factors [1], [2]. In partic
ular three techniques will be discussed in details, because of their a
bility to successfully achieve very low bitrate video coding with a re
asonably good quality. The simulation results obtained by these techni
ques under the exact same conditions are presented and the merits and
drawbacks of each one are pointed out throughout the paper.