H.264

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Also known as MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) it is now one of the most commonly used recording formats for high definition video. It offers significantly greater compression than previous formats.

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T&F

H.264 is a next-generation video compression format. H.264 is also known as MPEG-4 AVC. Developed for use in high definition systems such as HD TV, Blu-ray and HD DVD as well as low resolution portable devices such as Sony’s PSP and Apple’s iPod, H.264 offers better quality at lower file sizes than both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 ASP (DivX or XviD).

Apple has official adopted H.264 as the format for QuickTime. It is also one of the formats chosen to be supported by both high definition DVD standards, and is destined to be the future standard format for Blu-ray. Even AVCHD, the consumer format offered by the same people behind Blu-ray and for use in camcorders and Blu-ray recorders, uses H.264 as the main video format.

DivX Inc’s latest DivX version now also includes H.264 encoding and playback, including support for the MKV container and AAC audio. More information on Digital Digest’s DivX Codec software information page.

H.264 is sometimes referred (erroneously) as x264 – x264 is the name of a popular freeware encoder for the H.264 format. H.264 is also sometimes referred to as MP4, again this is technically incorrect. MP4 is a container format much like AVI or MKV and it can be used to “house” many different types of compression codecs, not just H.264. It is true though that MP4 is a very popular choice for the H.264 format. MP4 should not be confused with MPEG-4 video either.

H.264 is perhaps best known as being one of the codec standards for Blu-ray Discs; all Blu-ray Disc players must be able to decode H.264. It is also widely used by streaming internet sources, such as videos from Vimeo, YouTube, and the iTunes Store, web software such as the Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight, broadcast services for DVB and SBTVD, direct-broadcast satellite television services, cable television services, and real-time videoconferencing.

Most of HD Camcorders will shoot the video in H.264, too. The MTS\/M2TS, AVCHD files or AVCHD Lite files will contain H.264 as video codec format.

And H.264 can be used as video codec part in many popular formats, MP4, AVI and MOV, etc.