Systems, methods, and processor executable code for high quality wide-range multi-layer image compression of a sequence of video images. A non-transient electronic storage media stores the processor executable code configured and is capable of causing one or more processors to compress a sequence of digitized video images. The method includes generating a hierarchy of processed images from a digitized video image, determining a plurality of regions within each processed image, each region being selected based on lossless coding efficiency; and applying a lossless variable-length coding independently to each such region.