> Wavelet transformations completely destroy any DCT. It's not quite that simple. They have different strengths and weaknesses, so you can't say one is categor

> Wavelet transformations completely destroy any DCT. It's not quite that simple. They have different strengths and weaknesses, so you can't say one is categorically better than the other. DCT has uniform frequency resolution, which sounds desirable but isn't once you start quantizing due to ringing, etc. See slide 25 or so of [1]. Wavelets overcome this problem by adapting the resolution in opposite ways at the extremes. This works fantastic for medium signal rates, but can have severe low passing at low rates. For low rate coding DCT with the bells and whistles (deblocking, etc) will typically win. [1]: http://people.xiph.org/~tterribe/pubs/lca2012/auckland/intro_to_video1.pdf http://people.xiph.org/~tterribe/pubs/lca2012/auckland/intro...