The first goal of diploma thesis is to study the basic principles of video signal compression. Introduction to techniques used to reduce irrelevancy and redundancy in the video signal. The second goal is, on the basis of information about compression tools, implement the individual compression tools in the programming environment of Matlab and assemble simple model of the video codec. Diploma thesis contains a description of the three basic blocks, namely - interframe coding, intraframe coding and coding with variable length word - according the standard MPEG-2.