The application relates to a device and a process for compressing video documents. The process comprises the steps of: decomposition (1) of the video document into shots, extraction (2) of images representative of the said shots, measurement (3,4) of the distances between the said representative images, grouping (5) of the images whose distance is less than a predetermined threshold into a group of images, calculation (6) of the relative cost of coding of each image with respect to the other images of the group of images, according to the invention, the process furthermore comprises the stepsof calculation (7) of a minimum spanning tree for each group of images minimizing the cost of coding of each group of images coding (8) of each group of images by browsing the images in the order givenby the said spanning tree. Application to video archiving.