Transmitting video over wireless channels from mobile devices has gained increased popularity in a wide range of applications. A major obstacle in these types of applications is the limited energy supply in mobile device batteries. For this reason, efficiently utilizing energy is a critical issue in designing wireless video communication systems. This article highlights recent advances in joint source coding and optimal energy allocation. We present a general framework that takes into account multiple factors, including source coding, channel resource allocation, and error concealment, for the design of energy-efficient wireless video communication systems. This framework can take various forms and be applied to achieve the optimal trade-off between energy consumption and video delivery quality during wireless video transmission.