In one example, an apparatus for context adaptive entropy coding may include a coder configured to determine one or more initialization parameters for a context adaptive entropy coding process based on one or more initialization parameter index values. The coder may be further configured to determine one or more initial context states for initializing one or more contexts of the context adaptive entropy coding process based on the initialization parameters. The coder may be still further configured to initialize the contexts based on the initial context states. In some examples, the initialization parameters may be included in one or more tables, wherein, to determine the initialization parameters, the coder may be configured to map the initialization parameter index values to the initialization parameters in the tables. Alternatively, the coder may be configured to calculate the initialization parameters using the initialization parameter index values and one or more formulas.