Joint amplitude and position coding of coefficients for video compression

A coding method, apparatus, and medium with software encoded thereon to implement a coding method. The coding method includes jointly encoding joint events that each are defined by a cluster of consecutive non-zero-valued coefficients, each joint event defined by three parameters: the number of zero-valued coefficients preceding the cluster, the number of non-zero-valued coefficients in the cluster, and an indication of which trailing coefficients up to a maximum number of M trailing coefficients have amplitude greater than 1, with the coding using a 3-dimensional joint VLC table. The method further includes encoding the amplitude of the non-zero-valued trailing coefficients that have amplitude greater than 1 encoding the amplitude of any remaining non-zero-valued coefficients in the clusters that have more than M non-zero-valued coefficients.