referring to fig2 , an input signal is divided into equal - sized sub - blocks , for example , 8 × 8 , 16 × 16 , . . . . a motion estimator 40 determines a motion vector by comparing the current frame and a one frame delayed signal from a frame memory 30 . the motion vector is supplied to a motion compensator 60 which , in turn , compensates the delayed frame signal for movement . a first adder 8 a produces a difference signal representing the difference between the present frame and the delayed , motion - compensated frame . a dct coder 10 dct - codes the difference signal . the dct coded image signal is quantized by a quantizer 20 and then dequantized by a dequantizer 21 . the dequantized signal is supplied to a second adder 8 b , via idct 11 , which adds it to the output of the motion compensator 11 . this produces a signal corresponding to the original image signal . the output of the motion compensator 50 is applied to the adders 8 a , 8 b by refresh switches rsw 2 and rsw 1 , respectively . the quantized image signal is also supplied to a multi - scanner 80 which scans it according to a plurality of predetermined patterns . a scanner pattern selector 90 selects the scanning pattern which produces the minimum number of bits to represent the current sub - block . the scanning pattern selector also produces selection data which identifies the selected scanning pattern . the image signal output by the scanning pattern selector 90 is variable length coded by a variable length coder 60 . the variable length coder 60 compresses the image signal output by the scanning pattern selector 90 . the variable length coder 60 operates such that a large proportion of the data samples are each represented by a small number of bits while a small proportion of the data samples are each represented by a large number of bits . when a discrete cosine transformed image signal is quantized and runlength coded , the number of “ 0 ” s is increased over all , while the number of “ 0 ” s decreases as the magnitude of the signal increases . accordingly , data compression is achieved because “ 0 ” can be represented by only a few bits and “ 255 ” can be represented by a relatively large number of bits . both the variable length coded signal and the selection data are supplied to a multiplexer mux1 which multiplexes the variable length coded signal and the selection data , and optionally additional information such as teletext . since the variable length coded signal has data words of different lengths , a transfer buffer 70 is employed to temporarily store the multiplexed signal and output it at a constant rate . the original image signal is reconstructed at a remote station by performing the appropriate inverse scanning of the runlength coded signal in accordance with the multiplexed scanning pattern selection data . fig4 shows a decoding system at a remote station that receives and extracts the encoded data . in fig4 , demultiplexer 100 receives coded data and , in an operation inverse to that performed at the coding system , extracts the variable length encoded data , the scanning pattern information and the additional information that had been multiplexed together at the coding system . variable length decoder 110 variable length decodes the variable length encoded data , and scanner 120 receives the variable length decoded data and reconstructs the original sub - block using a scanning pattern indicated by the extracted scanning pattern selection signal . the scanner would necessarily have to select one from a plurality pattern that was available for encoding . using components having the same margin as dequantizers 21 and idct 11 in the encoder system , dequantizer 120 dequantizes the signal output from the scanner 120 , and inverse discrete cosine transformer 140 performs an inverse discrete cosine transform function on the output of dequantizer 130 , to output decoded data . fig3 a to 3h show possible scanning patterns employed by the multi - scanner 80 . additional scanning patterns will be apparent to those skilled in the art . however , if the number of patterns becomes too large , the coding efficiency is degraded as the selection data word becomes longer . as described above , according to the present invention , the quantized image signal is scanned according to various scanning patterns , and then the most efficient pattern is selected . a suitable measure of efficiency is the number of bits required to runlength code the image signal .