This lecture provides a tutorial overview of current and emerging video compression standards. Video compression has been crucial for enabling a variety of applications including digital television, digital video disk (DVD), video telephony, and video streaming over the Internet and over wireless links. Specifically, these applications were enabled by recent international standards for video compression. Video compression standards provide a number of benefits, foremost of which is facilitating interoperability, thereby lowering risk for both the consumer and the manufacturer and resulting in quicker acceptance, widespread use, and reduced cost through economies of scale. This lecture briefly discusses the principles and practice of conventional video compression algorithms, while concentrating on aspects that are used in the current standards. The current video compression standards are described, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.261, and H.263, with emphasis on their primary application profiles and their similarities and differences.