Research in very low-bit rate coding has made significant advancements in the past few years. Most recently, the introduction of the MPEG-4 proposal has motivated a wide variety of a approaches aimed at achieving a new level of video compression. In this paper we review progress in VLBV categorized into 3 main areas. (1) Waveform coding, (2) 2D Content-based coding, and (3) Model-based coding. Where appropriate we also described proposals to the MPEG-4 committee in each of these areas.