We discuss a new robust tracking technique applied to histograms of intensity-normalized color. This technique supports a video codec based on orthonormal basis coding. Orthonormal basis coding can be very efficient when the images to be coded have been normalized in size and position. However an imprecise tracking procedure can have a negative impact on the efficiency and the quality of reconstruction of this technique, since it may increase the size of the required basis space. The face tracking procedure described in this paper has certain advantages, such as greater stability, higher precision, and less jitter, over conventional tracking techniques using color histograms. In addition to those advantages, the features of the tracked object such as mean and variance are mathematically describable.