A video coding method and apparatus are provided for improving compression efficiency or video/image quality by selecting a spatial transform method suitable for characteristics of an incoming video/image during video/image compression. The video coding apparatus includes a temporal transform module for removing temporal redundancy in an input frame to generate a residual frame, a wavelet transform module for performing wavelet transform on the residual frame to generate a wavelet coefficient, a Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) module for performing DCT on the wavelet coefficient of each DCT block to create a DCT coefficient, and a quantization module for quantizing the DCT coefficient.