The term fractal was coined by mathematician Benoit Madelbrot in 1975, "the Latin verb frangere means to break to create irregular fragments."

Credit for the first practical fractal compression system goes to Michael Barnsley, also a mathematician, who patented the technology in 1987. Using the image itself as the codebook, fractal compression reduces irrelevant and redundant image data so less storage space is needed to manage digital video. In any sequence of images, blocks containing similar patterns are repeated. A fractal algorithm encodes these blocks into data, or "fractal codes". When images are viewed; fractal code containing matching blocks of the original are remapped back into the correct image location. Self-similar blocks are reused during this decoding process.

TRUDEF™ is a video codec based on VDK3 fractal compression which is entirely different technology than Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) common in video compression today. The modern successor of TMMI's VDK2.1 SoftVideo codec orignally licensed from Iterated Systems Inc. in 1994, TRUDEF™ VDK3 is designed for native (non scaled) high resolution Intra Frame video for specialized use cases demanding premium quality.

Most commonly used video distribution codecs operate in YUV 4:2:0 color which downsamples, discarding color data to reach high compression ratios at the cost of leaving a "washed out" appearance with visible compression artifacts. By displaying video in RGB/YUV 4:4:4 color, Intra Frame encoded with 2x2 pixel blocks, TRUDEF™ VDK3 fractal video provides visually lossless quality.