Compression for Multimedia was primarily developed as class notes for my course on techniques for compression of data, speech, music, pictures, and video that I have been teaching for more than 10 years at the University of Aerospace Instrumentation, St Petersburg.

During spring 2005 I worked at Lund University as the Lise Meitner Visiting Professor. I have used part of this time to thoroughly revise and substantially extend my previous notes, resulting in the present version.

I would also like to mention that this task could not have been fulfilled without support. Above all, I am indebted to my colleague and husband Boris Kudryashov. Without our collaboration I would not have reached my view of how various compression techniques could be developed and should be taught. Boris' help in solving many TEX problems was invaluable. Special thanks go to Grigory Tenengolts who supported our research and development of practical methods for multimedia compression. Finally, I am grateful to Rolf Johannesson who proposed me as a Lise Meitner Visiting Professor and, needless to say, to the Engineering faculty of Lund University who made his recommendation become true! Rolf also suggested that I should give an undergraduate course on compression for multimedia at Lund University, develop these notes, and eventually publish them as a book. Thanks!