IHC™ Intelligent Hypercompression is an object oriented wavelet based data compression system for security surveillance system and surveillance video system applications. The unique object selection and extraction features high resolution viewing while conserving bandwidth. High quality images can be selected and viewed with higher data rates and higher frame rates than the significantly reduced (data and frame rate) background. IHC is a programmable compression software and hardware solution which allows the user to select the object or background with variable operating parameters, such as compression ratio, frame rate, and data rate. As compared to frame based systems such as MPEG or fractal, IHC™ offers a much higher resolution and image quality of the object (s), while working at a lower bandwidth (phone line).