What is H.264 Format?

About H.264 Format

H.264 is a video compression technology, or codec, that was jointly developed by the International Telecommunications Union (as H.264) and International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission Moving Picture Experts Group (as MPEG-4 Part 10, Advanced Video Coding, or AVC). Thus, the terms H.264 and AVC mean the same thing and are interchangeable.

H.264/AVC is a major video compression scheme and is widely used in a number of applications as it provides a far more efficient codec than any other algorithm. Its main advantage is that it can encode video with 3 times fewer bits than any other comparable format. This enables it to fit more television programs into a given channel bandwidth, deliver quality video over limited bandwidth channels (like 3G mobiles), and fit a high-definition video onto a standard DVD.

As a video codec, H.264 can be incorporated into multiple container formats, and is frequently produced in the MPEG-4 container format, which uses the .MP4 extension, as well as QuickTime (.MOV), Flash (.F4V), 3GP for mobile phones (.3GP), and the MPEG transport stream (.ts). Most of the time, but not all the time, H.264 video is encoded with audio compressed with the AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) codec, which is an ISO/IEC standard (MPEG4 Part 3).

Related Software

Leawo Video Converter (H.264 Converter): Full-featured video converting software to convert video and audio among all popular formats. So it can be regarded as a smart H.264 Converter which supports to convert video to H.264 coded video as well as convert H.264 to video formats of sorts, for H.264 file enjoyment on any media players on the go. You can even enjoy 3D video by resorting to 3D video conversion function of the program.

Leawo DVD Ripper (DVD to H.264 Converter): Versatile DVD ripping program to rip any DVDs to video formats of sorts. So it also functions as a powerful DVD to H.264 Converter for you to rip DVD to H.264 format that is compatible with various video players including iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, PSP, PS3 and more.