An information handling system includes a processor that may perform preprocessing on a variable-length code (VLC) bitstream before decoding the bitstream. The bitstream includes multiple codewords. The processor analyzes incoming VLC bitstream information and generates codeword table information for storage in a system memory or a VLC codeword tables location. The processor generates a VLC lookup table from the information in the VLC codeword tables and stores that VLC lookup table in a system memory of the IHS. The VLC lookup table may exhibit two dimensional indexing by leading zero count and bit-length possibility.