A method and system for transferring data from a rotating data source to a stationary target over a slip ring. The system includes a compressor on a rotor, a decompressor on a stationary platform, and respectively corresponding memory buffers. The data is optionally compressed in the event that the slip ring capacity is below the required rate. The compressor a predictor unit, an entropy encoder unit and an error protector unit. The predictor unit may use stored data as reference from a set of frames and locations within them. Encoding of locations may be carried out with a Golomb-Rice encoded integer, and entropy encoding of differences may involve Golomb-Rice encoding with parameter K varying for each group of data units. The error protector protects parameters inserted into data stream with an error protection code while most of the data can remain without protection.