Editing Golomb coding (section)

== Applications ==
[[File:Golomb coded Rice Algorithm experiment Compression Ratios.png|thumb|upright 1.5|Golomb-coded Rice algorithm experiment compression ratios]]

Numerous signal codecs use a Rice code for [[prediction]] residues.
In predictive algorithms, such residues tend to fall into a two-sided [[geometric distribution]], with small residues being more frequent than large residues, and the Rice code closely approximates the Huffman code for such a distribution without the overhead of having to transmit the Huffman table.
One signal that does not match a geometric distribution is a [[sine wave]], because the differential residues create a sinusoidal signal whose values are not creating a geometric distribution (the highest and lowest residue values have similar high frequency of occurrences, only the median positive and negative residues occur less often).

Several lossless [[audio data compression|audio codecs]], such as [[Shorten (file format)|Shorten]],<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.etree.org/shnutils/shorten/support/doc/shorten.txt |title=man shorten |access-date=2008-12-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140130053525/http://www.etree.org/shnutils/shorten/support/doc/shorten.txt |archive-date=2014-01-30 |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[FLAC]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://xiph.org/flac/documentation_format_overview.html|title=FLAC - Format overview|website=xiph.org}}</ref> [[Apple Lossless]], and [[MPEG-4 ALS]], use a Rice code after the [[Linear predictive coding|linear prediction step]] (called "adaptive FIR filter" in Apple Lossless).
Rice coding is also used in the [[FELICS]] lossless image codec.

The Golomb–Rice coder is used in the entropy coding stage of [[Rice algorithm]] based ''lossless image codecs''. One such experiment yields the compression ratio graph shown.

The [[Lossless JPEG#JPEG-LS|JPEG-LS]] scheme uses Rice–Golomb to encode the prediction residuals.

The adaptive version of Golomb–Rice coding mentioned above, the RLGR encoder [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/adaptive-run-length-golomb-rice-encoding-of-quantized-generalized-gaussian-sources-with-unknown-statistics/],is used for encoding screen content in virtual machines in the [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff635165.aspx RemoteFX] component of the Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol.