synonyms: AVC,Advanced Video Coding

H.264 is a relatively new video encoding layer of MPEG-4, called nowadays officially as AVC (and sometimes incorrectly referred as H264, without the "dot").

MPEG-4 itself contains various encoding methods, called "subsets" or "layers", and the H.264 is a latest standardized layer in the MPEG-4 standard, launched in late 2002.

As the high definition material has become increasingly popular, H.264 has gained popularity quite rapidly.

The codec is one of the official video codecs used in "next generation" video discs, HD-DVD and Blu-ray. H.264 is also gaining ground in TV broadcasting, replacing the old MPEG-2 in HD broadcasts. Latest satellite breed of DVB standards, DVB-S2, uses H.264 / AVC as its primary video codec.

Other MPEG-4 layers include Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile that most MPEG-4 encoders nowadays use, including DivX and the latest breend of RealVideo codecs.

Several open source software projects support H.264 and the free, open sourced H.264 encoder, x264 is widely used to encode own HD (and normal resolution) videos. Furthermore, extremely popular video decoder, FFDSHOW supports H.264 as well.

For more information, see the glossary definitions for:

Blu-ray DivX DVB HD DVD HDTV MPEG-4