We present an automatic technique employing the H.263 standard to compress
video sequences which have been generated by consumer equipment. The purpos
e is to optimise H.263 parameters on sequences having a wide range of chara
cteristics in terms of detail content and motion, to obtain a low cost and
low bit-rate video coder with acceptable performances in terms of visual qu
ality. This technique is conceived to be implemented as a set-top box for t
he upload of home-produced video sequences.