A method and apparatus for storing bitplanes of coefficients in a reduced size memory is disclosed. In one embodiment, a method for encoding coefficients comprises applying one or more wavelet transforms to generate multiple coefficients and storing N bitplanes of each of the multiple coefficients in a first memory having multiple rows. Each of the multiple coefficients has a bit length greater than N bits, and each storage location in each of the rows stores a bit of either a more significant bitplane of the coefficients or a less significant bitplane of the coefficients. The storing of N bitplanes includes storing an indication for each row of the rows to indicate a location in each row at which bits of more significant bitplanes have started to be stored and after which bits of the multiple coefficients of the less significant bitplanes are no longer stored.