What is H.264/AVC

What is H.264/AVCH.264/Advanced Video Coding (AVC) is an industry standard for video compression. The H.264 standard is also known as MPEG-4 Part 10 and is a successor to earlier standards such as MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. An ITU standard for compressing video based on MPEG-4 that is popular, especially for high-definition video. AVC stands for Advanced Video Coding. Actually its identical to H.264 so you can find it as H.264, H.264/AVC, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC or MPEG-4 Part 10 (it can be twice as efficient as MPEG-4 Part 2).

Taking advantage of today's high-speed chips, H.264 delivers MPEG-4 quality with a frame size up to four times greater. It can also provide MPEG-2 quality at a reduced data rate, requiring as little as one third the original bandwidths. You can think it as the "successor" of the existing formats (MPEG-2, DivX, XviD etc) as it aims in offering similar video quality in half the size of the formats mentioned before (this reduction enables burning one HD movie onto a conventional DVD).

File Extension for H264

You may come across all kind of file extensions and still the codec can be H264:

• .avi - Yes, people use .avi for H264 videos too!
• .mp4 - Nero Recode and Quicktime use this format. Better than AVI as you can store AAC audio as well (Default).
• .mkv - Matroska container - can support many video and audio formats. Have a look here for more info.
• .h264 - This extension is not commonly used. Maybe in the future.