A method, apparatus, and a computer readable hardware storage medium with instructions to encode a series of quantized transform coefficients. The method includes identifying runs of one or more non-zero coefficients, and for each such run, identifying events of consecutive amplitude-1 coefficients followed by a single amplitude>1 coefficient. The method further includes encoding the identified event with a codeword, each event identified according to the length of the consecutive amplitude-1 coefficients and the amplitude of the ending coefficient. The method is such that relatively short codewords are formed to represent values or sequences of values that are relatively more likely-to-occur, and relatively long codewords are formed to represent values or sequences of values that are relatively less likely-to-occur. The method is applicable to encoding a region in the series where there is likely to be a cluster of non-zero-valued coefficients.