Clarification on H.264 please

[DVDjohn]

Can anyone explain how H.264 is NOT the same as AVC? I was under the impression that they were synonamous, but according to Ben Drawbaugh over at Engadget HD, there is a distinction.

I always thought H.264, MPEG4 part 10, AVC were all the same things just go9ng by different names.

Can anyone clarify this for me? Thanks.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

I always thought H.264, MPEG4 part 10, AVC were all the same things just go9ng by different names.

Yes, "H.264" and "MPEG-4, Part-10 (Advanced Video Coding)" are two names for the very same video compression standard. The latter is often abbreviated as "AVC".

H.264/AVC was developed by the JVT (Joint Video Team), which consisted of people from both, the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) and the MPEG (Motion Pictures Expert Group).

As far as I know, the MPEG joined the development of H.264 after they realized that the ITU was on a better way than their own "next generation" video standard.

The MPEG made it a part of their MPEG-4 standard, so it's called "MPEG-4, Part-10" in MPEG jargon. In ITU jargon it's called "h.264", in the tradition of their previous "h.xxx" standards, like "h.263".

BTW: Yet another name for H.264/AVC is "ISO/IEC 14496-10", that's the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) name :D

[DVDjohn]

So is Ben Drawbaugh wrong? I heard him clearly state in his podcast "AVC is not H.264. They are different."

He is so knowlegable I thought he must know something I do not.

[froggy1]

Yes, he's wrong. No, they're not different

[setarip_old]

Hi!

According to WikiPedia at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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MPEG-4 is a patented suite of standards which has many "parts", where each part standardizes various entities related to multimedia, such as audio, video, and file formats. To learn more about various parts and what they mean, please see the entry for MPEG-4.
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is a standard for video compression. The final drafting work on the first version of the standard was completed in May 2003.

H.264/AVC is the latest block-oriented motion-compensation-based codec standard developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), and it was the product of a partnership effort known as the Joint Video Team (JVT). The ITU-T H.264 standard and the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 AVC standard (formally, ISO/IEC 14496-10 - MPEG-4 Part 10, Advanced Video Coding) are jointly maintained so that they have identical technical content. H.264 is most popular for its use on Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD and videos from the iTunes Store. (I provided the bolded red highlighting)

Are you sure he wasn't referring to x264?

[DVDjohn]

Hi!

According to WikiPedia at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

(I provided the bolded red highlighting)

Are you sure he wasn't referring to x264?

I don't think so; but even so, I thought x264 was just the open source H.264 encoder. So wouldn't they really be pretty much the same thing anyway?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

I don't think so; but even so, I thought x264 was just the open source H.264 encoder. So wouldn't they really be pretty much the same thing anyway?

H.264/AVC is a video compression standard. That is papers (http://www.neuron2.net/library/avc/T-REC-H[1].264-200711-I!!PDF-E.pdf), definitions and specification. But it's not a software you can use!

x264 is a H.264 encoder. It implements the H.264 standard in software. And x264 is only one H.264 encoder out of many. It's one of the best though and it's OpenSource :)

In other words: x264 is to H.264 what Xvid/DivX are to MPEG-4 Part-2 (ASP). Or: x264 produces a valid H.264 bitstream that can be decoded by any H.264 decoder.

(BTW: There is a "reference" encoder for H.264, the "JM reference software" developed by the JVT. But that's more a prove-of-concept. Far too slow for any "real" encodes)

[DVDjohn]

H.264/AVC is a video compression standard. That is papers (http://www.neuron2.net/library/avc/T-REC-H[1].264-200711-I!!PDF-E.pdf), definitions and specification. But it's not a software you can use!

x264 is a H.264 encoder. It implements the H.264 standard in software. And x264 is only one H.264 encoder out of many. It's one of the best though and it's OpenSource :)

Or in other words: x264 is to H.264 what Xvid/DivX are to MPEG-4 Part-2 (ASP).

(BTW: There is a "reference" encoder for H.264, the "JM reference software" developed by the JVT. But that's more a prove-of-concept. Far too slow for any "real" encode)

Thanks LM, you're the best!:thanks: