An apparatus for transmitting multimedia, wherein the apparatus includes an image compression unit for compressing an image portion of a multimedia data frame, an audio compression unit for compressing an audio portion of the multimedia frame, and a bit rate manager in communication with the image compression unit and the audio compression unit for controlling frame flow. A merger unit in communication with each of the image compression unit and the audio compression unit is provided for merging a compressed image portion and a compressed audio portion into a single compressed multimedia frame, wherein the image compression unit utilizes multidimensional hierarchical categorization trees to compress the image portion.