Methods, systems, and computer programs for encoding images are described. In one aspect, quantized frequency domain vectors are sequentially generated from a sequence of blocks of the image. Each quantized frequency domain vector includes a set of quantized forward transform coefficients that are derived from a respective image block. For each successive quantized frequency domain vector, a current input capacity level of a buffer is determined and the quantized frequency domain vector is modified to increase compressibility when the current input capacity level is determined to be below a prescribed threshold. Modified and unmodified quantized frequency domain vectors are encoded into a sequence of encoded image blocks. The sequence of encoded image blocks is stored in the buffer.