Entropy encoding scheme

Decomposing a value range of the respective syntax elements into a sequence of n partitions with coding the components of z laying within the respective partitions separately with at least one by VCL coding and with at least one by PIPE or entropy coding is used to greatly increase the compression efficiency at a moderate coding overhead since the coding scheme used may be better adapted to the syntax element statistics. Accordingly, in accordance with embodiments, syntax elements are decomposed into a respective number n of source symbols si with i=1...n, the respective number n of source symbols depending on as to which of a sequence of n partitions (1401-3) into which a value range of the respective syntax elements is sub-divided, a value z of the respective syntax elements falls into, so that a sum of values of the respective number of source symbols si yields z, and, if n>1, for all i=1...n-1, the value of si corresponds to a range of the ith partition.