The quantized PCM mode includes quantizing the samples to add distortion to the coded video. In this way, video blocks coded with quantized PCMs appear more uniform with adjacent video blocks coded with other lossy compression techniques such as inter-prediction coding or intra-prediction coding. The video encoder may first quantize the input video samples into a quantization step prior to PCM coding the quantized samples. This quantization step may be signaled to the decoder in the encoded video bitstream. The video decoder may receive an encoded video bitstream comprising quantized PCM coded video samples. These samples are first decoded using pulse code demodulation and dequantized into the same quantization steps used to encode the next video. The video decoder may extract this quantization step from the output bit-depth in the encoded video bitstream.